


Here to Learn

by Medicalnonsense



Series: Here For You [1]
Category: Daft Punk
Genre: M/M, Teenage Daft Punk, Teenage Dorks, Thomas and Guy are human, grocery store au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-11-24
Packaged: 2018-01-17 14:28:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 38,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1391128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medicalnonsense/pseuds/Medicalnonsense
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It might have been laughable that Thomas was getting his first job at the age of eighteen, but what was not laughable was the attitude of his senior co-worker.  He's rude, he's crude and maybe he just doesn't care if he gets someone fired along the way, but Thomas needs a job before he starts university and Guy-Man is not going to get in the way of that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The World at Large--Modest Mouse

         At the age of eighteen, it was a little embarrassing for Thomas to admit that this was his first job.  Most of his other friends had gotten jobs from the age of sixteen and had moved out of their parents house at the graduation of upper-secondary school.  His parents had never been pushy though, they always had impressed upon him it was whatever _he_ wanted to do.  However, as he was going to be going away to university soon, he figured he needed to make some money over the summer.  There was also he didn’t want to go to university with zero work experience.  So, he finally said goodbye to the idea of endless idle days of summer, applied for a job as stocking hand and here he was.  
         “Tuck in your shirt.” His manager told him as he arrived for his first day of work.  
         “Sorry, sir!”  Thomas apologized immediately, quickly reaching for the zipper of his slacks.  
         “Not here!” the older man ordered with a hint of humor in his tone.  
         Turning red, Thomas realized that they _were_ on the service floor of the building, customers walking by and picking out the things they needed.  That could’ve been bad.  Not that he was wearing embarrassing, heart-stamped skivvies or anything…  Swallowing and working up the courage to look the other man in the eye again, he uneasily said “Y-Yeah, sorry about that--wasn’t thinking.”  
         “Most of what you’re going to be doing, though, doesn’t have much to do with customer interaction.” the older man, his name tag reading Stephen, “As I have told _many_ a person,” his voice sounded heavy and weary, “as long as you do your job quickly and efficiently, I don’t care what you do out of the view of customers.”  As he spoke, he pressed his hand against the doors that lead to the back room, Thomas following quickly on his heels.  
          The backside of the store was unbelievably large to Thomas.  It seemed larger than the sales floor to him, however, that was probably more because he had seen only the sales floor for all of his life.  Never once did he think of where all the products sat whilst waiting to be stocked.  His mouth dipped open in awe, completely missing that his supervisor was walking away.  
          Hoping the man hadn’t noticed his moment of accidental inattentiveness, he took off after him as the man explained all the things he needed to know.  He needed to know that the firelane was never to be blocked; he needed to know that if he was too short to grab something off a shelf--though for him this would not be a problem--to _please_ use a ladder and not a cart, not a box of product, the electrical box--which he motioned to as they passed--or use long metal rods with sharp ends.  Thomas had the urge to snigger to himself as it seemed the man had indeed had past employees that had done these very things.

  
         For the next two hours, Thomas had it explained to him how to get the information he needed for stocking.  He held something that appeared to be a gun at his hip that scanned everything and told him how much they had in the back versus how many they should’ve had in the store total.  Thankfully the system that the guns used was a self-updating program whenever one of the products left the store so it wasn’t like he had to go up and interact with the people cashing out customers that often.  
         The two men walked about the store, Thomas practicing and eventually going into the back to get the items that he needed.  All the while, he was increasingly happy that he spent very little time around customers, it wasn’t he hated customers, no, it was that it was something of a soul-crushingly awkward task for him to talk to them.  
         “I’m glad to see we have a fast learner on staff.”  Stephen commented, reaching up to brush his mustache with his fingers.  “You don’t have to work a full shift today, I just needed to show you the ropes.  Orientation after orientation.” he chuckled to himself, though Thomas couldn’t quite understand what was so funny.  “You’ll have another orientation tomorrow, but it’ll be less job-related.”  
         “I don’t understand…”  
         “You’ll see.” The older man sighed, “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Stephen patted him on the back, “You did good, kid.”  
         “Heh, t-thanks.” Thomas smiled at him, at least his manager wasn’t an asshole.  Well, he wasn’t one yet, he knew that first impressions were almost entirely wrong every time…  Oh, but if that was the case then that meant that he was going to do terribly at this job!  As he was dismissed and began to look slowly to the floor, he heard something that sounded like a nasty altercation going on to his left.  
          Lifting his head with interest, he peered over the glass counter displaying all different cuts of pork, chicken and beef to a small doorway that lead from the department into the back hallway.  A very tall man with extremely long, dark hair seemed to be yelling down at a much shorter employee.  The shorter man also had long hair, but rather than it be pulled back in a ponytail and flowing straight down his back, it was uncontained and fluffy with waving curls.  He seemed overall very bored with the entire back and forth.  As the taller employee yelled, he was only responding with quiet tones as he raised a cigarette to his lips…  Thomas was pretty sure he wasn’t allowed to have that, but as it didn’t seem to be lit, maybe that didn’t matter.  
         For a second, the shorter man’s eyes flitted away from his conversant and landed on him.  Feeling electricity in that moment, like the man was going to dive down his throat and rip his stomach out if he continued to watch for much longer, Thomas looked away and began walking again.  He swallowed thickly and cast a look over his shoulder back at the two fighting men, but saw that the shorter man had grown bored enough with the conversation to leave; the taller man, seemed to grunt, unbelievably frustrated, but didn’t pursue him and went back to his prior job.  Which, that job seemed to be hacking into a haunch of meat.  
         Thomas shivered, he needed to never make either of those people angry if he expected to live.

\-------

         Thomas’s second day of work, he came in at a time close to sunset.  He hadn’t originally signed up to do third-shift, but if they gave him the hours he wasn’t going to complain.  Tonight was going to be another short shift as he was just being trained on the ins and outs of his job once again.  
          Appearing in the back hallway just as many of the other employees were leaving for the evening, he looked around for his supervisor.  This meant some confused wandering around and looking as clueless as he really was as he tried to locate anyone he felt comfortable enough to approach.  This was exactly zero people as he was, as far as he knew, the only person in the entire back dock.  Shuffling back towards the door to the sales floor, his nose caught something he hadn’t smelled before in the area, smoke.  Not the panic-worthy type of smoke either, but tobacco smoke.  
         Turning his head in the direction that the smell was strongest, he jumped in surprise, seeing a pair of cold, blue eyes fixed on him.  As far as he was able to tell, it was the same short man from the day prior who had been fighting with the meat clerk.  He wasn’t doing much other than reclining on a stack of boxes--that had been arranged into a shape uncannily similar to an armchair--and holding a cigarette to his lips, there was the staring part too…  Thomas felt a wave of relief when the other man blinked and looked down to a clipboard he had been holding in his lap.  
         “H-Have you s-seen um…”  
         The other man slid off the stack of boxes and began to walk away.  
         “Wait, hey!  Have you seen, Stephen?!”  Thomas questioned, emboldened by the panic brought on by his boss potentially thinking he hadn’t shown up for work.  
         The long-haired employee ignored him and continued to look down at his clipboard.  Maybe he was deaf?  
         Thomas picked up his pace and moved to walk in a backwards motion in front of his co-worker, “Hey,” he waved his hands, “I need your help here!”  
         All this proved to do was frustrate the other person, make himself walk faster as well and go around Thomas.  
        Feeling like giving up, Thomas stood still, watching as the other man kept walking with a frown.  For a few moments he thought maybe it was possible for Stephen to have been up front waiting for him to arrive, but he was a manager and so was far too busy for that.  Did he have an office he was maybe in?  It occurred to Thomas that maybe he should’ve asked Stephen that the day prior in the event that this happened.  
         “Ahem!”  
         Thomas jumped at the unfamiliar voice, his head darting around to find the source of it, though it wasn’t from who he would’ve expected.  The rude employee that had been walking away was standing still in the aisle as if waiting for him to catch up.  He felt his skin prickle, knowing that his icy eyes were fixed upon him and impatient and this so caused him to go into a light jog to catch up with him.  The man--why the hell wasn’t he wearing a name tag?--still didn’t speak to him, however and just continued to walk down the hallway.  
         They reached a giant door fixed in the side of the wall at the opposite end from where they had started.  His co-worker pointed to the door and jerked his head for him to go in.  
        Nonplussed, Thomas hesitated as he placed his hand on the door’s handle and pulled.  A cold breeze suddenly came upon him and he shivered realizing it was a cooler.  He poked his head inside and found his manager busy arranging pallets and pallets of milk and yogurt.  
         As if sensing the door had been opened, Stephen looked over his shoulder, “Thomas!  Good to see you’ve arrived!  I’ll be out in just a moment.”  
         “Okay.” Thomas smiled, turning to find the man who had helped him, but found he was already gone.

  
         As it turned out, prepping for third-shift really wasn’t all that complicated or different from what Thomas would be doing on day-shift.  All Stephen reiterated over and over again was “It’s going to be a lot more boring and lot more frustrating for you”.  Thomas supposed he understood what he was getting at, being bored at work was probably a frustrating thing, right?  
         Overall he just had to remember that every Monday was truck day for dry goods, Tuesday was produce, Wednesday was for breads, every Thursday was meats and seafood, diary was Friday.  Saturday and Sunday were order submit days--Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday orders were to be submitted by Saturday evening, Thursday and Friday orders were to be submitted on Sunday evening.  He was told that unless he planned to stay on staff for a long period of time, he wouldn’t have to worry about that and a senior co-worker would often take care of that for him.  
         Once Thomas was down to the last hour of his shift, his manager sighed, “Okay, now I have to explain to you the necessary evil of this job and why nobody has ever held your position for a long time over the past couple years.”  
         Thomas wrung his hands uncomfortably and chuckled, “Uh, i-is there some sort of curse on my position?”  
         Stephen shrugged, “If you want to look at it that way, go ahead.  Follow me.”  He headed for the very back dock where orders were received and looked around, “Guy-Manuel?” he called out into the rows and rows of boxes.  
          At least Thomas now knew that it was going to be more than just himself on shift.  He put on his best face and tried to not be nervous.  Whatever this person was going to teach him, he needed to make a good impression on him too and get it done as quickly as possible.  That expression quickly dropped off his face, however as he saw who it was that emerged out of the lattice of products.  
         “What’s up?”  the short man from earlier, his voice grainy from what sounded like taking a nap and the way his hair was tangled up on one side seemed to suggest that as well.  
         “Guy-Manuel, this is Thomas, he’ll be working with you.”  Stephen introduced, Thomas hoping more than anything that his first impression of this man--Guy-Manuel--turned out to be wrong.  
          His co-worker didn’t look at him and addressed Stephen, “We’ve met.”  
          “Good, I’m happy to hear that.  Don’t scare him off too quickly, he’s actually promising.”  
          If the definition of “annoyed” or “haughty” had a picture next to it in the dictionary, Thomas felt that it would’ve been a picture of the exact face Guy-Manuel was making in that moment, “Is that so?”  
         “He looks like an incompetent fool to me.”  
         “H-Hey!”  He was standing right there!  
         “Everyone seems that way to you, he’s _new_ Guy-Man.” the two carried on their conversation as if Thomas wasn’t standing less than two feet from either of them.  
         “And I’m often right.” Guy-Manuel snorted petulantly, shrugging and heading off back between the boxes.  
         Stephen sighed again, taking off his hand and running his fingers through his salt and pepper hair, “Well, that’s the guy you’re going to be working with most of the time.”  
         “W-What?”  He couldn’t _possibly_ be serious!  
         “He’s the only stocker we’ve been able to keep on staff for about three years now.  You’re the most recent in a long-line of employees.  Just know that if you ever want to quit--which I hope you don’t because _I_ at least really think you’ll be good at this--nobody will ever think less of you for it.”  Stephen let out a bitter laugh, “He’s the necessary evil I was speaking of.”  
         “Aren’t you afraid of him hearing us, uh, talk about him?”  
         Stephen shook his head, “He knows I warn everyone about him.”  
         “Oh…”  Thomas wondered how that must’ve felt…  However, once he considered that Guy-Manuel had been ostensibly acting this way for the past three years, he obviously didn’t care.  
         “So, will I see you tomorrow for a full shift?”  
         That wasn’t even a question worth asking, “Of course!”

 

 


	2. Shadow On the Sun--Audioslave

         The first full shift that Thomas experienced, as it turned out, wasn’t even going to be with Stephen.  It was going to be him and Guy-Manuel doing third shift for a whole eight hours…  From 22:00 to 6:00, he had to somehow make himself not seem like a blazing idiot in spite of the fact that he still knew very little about what he was doing.  
         From his first minute of work, he already knew he was going to be in for quite a night.  Guy-Manuel was situated on top of a stack of boxes, a cigarette burning between his lips.  Thomas felt the need to tell him he probably should’ve have been doing that, but refrained.  He didn’t need to seem like the bossy new guy that knew everything…  Though, he was sure it was common knowledge that one didn’t just _smoke_ inside their place of employment when it wasn’t even legal for customers to smoke inside.  
         “What are you staring at?” Guy-Manuel muttered over the clipboard in his hand.  
         “N-Nothing, s-sir.”  
         “Mn, don’t call me sir.” he grunted.  
         “O-Okay, it’s Guy-Manuel, right?”  
         Hearing Guy-Manuel snort first, Thomas watched as he dropped himself down from the stack to his feet, “Don’t call me that either.”  
         “W-What should I call you, then?”  Thomas awkwardly asked.  
         “ ‘Hey you’ has worked fine over the years.”  
         “B-But I don’t want to be rude…”  
         “Then don’t call me anything. I don’t give a shit.” the short man shouldered past his beanpole co-worker and began to shift the boxes of the loading dock around into a better configuration.  
         “Um, s-so i-is, uh--”  
         “Look, I’m not your buddy, pal, chum, friend or dude.” Guy-Manuel continued, raising one finger for each called pronoun, “I _will_ , however, from past experiences, understand you mean me when I hear ‘hey’ followed by either ‘you’, ‘douchebag’, ‘faggot’, ‘asshole’, or ‘dumbfuck’.” he explained, picking up a box of bananas that needed to be transferred to the produce cooler.  “Take your fucking pick.”  
         Watching him leave with the box of bananas, Thomas realized that while Guy-Manuel’s tirade hadn’t helped him in his particular quest of what to call him, it did tell him something.  Either Guy-Manuel _liked_ being hated or, and this was the more sad of the two options, he just expected it.  With a frown, he came to the conclusion that he was not going to call his new coworker any of those things, they just didn’t feel right…  He _was_ a person after all and every person, even the bratty ones, deserved respect.  
         Though, he didn’t really have the time to speak to Guy-Manuel much more that first night.  The rest of the night was filled with unloading the truck and stocking all of the shelves on the sales floor as well as religating products to their rightful areas of storage.  The more experienced of them barked a couple of utilitarian orders when Thomas forgot what it was he was supposed to be doing, but otherwise, communication was minimal.  When the morning rolled around, Thomas was so exhausted he could’ve have cared less where Guy-Manuel had disappeared off to, all he cared about was getting home and hitting the sack.

\-------

         His fourth and fifth days of work, Guy-Manuel wasn’t present, his shift didn’t begin until the evening.  This, while an emotional relief meant that he had to do the whole store by himself as his manager took care of more important things such as taking numbers for what to order come Saturday and Sunday.  Overall, it was quite a humiliating experience as more often than not, he had to ask one of the other employees what aisles things were on.  Not that he suspected that Guy-Manuel would’ve been helpful about it either.  He banked he either wouldn’t have told him shit or he would’ve just made fun of him and still not helped him.  
          His fifth day was the first day that he laid down in bed and wished he had a better job.

\-------

         His sixth day of work came on the other side of a few days off.  Those days had actually been quite boring.  It wasn’t that he wasn’t sociable or that he didn’t have friends, he just felt too tired to do anything.  Was either asleep or working on music or listening to music or just procrastinating anything he had to do for university.  He knew it was going to bite him in the ass in the end, but he just didn’t feel like doing it.

  
         As he was beginning to see was a trend, Thomas found Guy-Manuel sitting in the back dock on top of a set of boxes that ostensibly contained jars of jelly.  Yet again, he was smoking and trying to ignore Thomas’s very existence.  
         “Hey, uhm, Guy-Man, is there any--”  
         “Don’t call me that.” The terse man cut him off with a venomous scowl.  “My friends call me that.”  
         In a kneejerk reaction, Thomas almost said “You have friends?”, but he quashed it before anything came out of his mouth, “Okay, then, uh, is just Guy, okay?”  
         “I gave you your options the last time we worked together.” the irascible man snorted, “Pick from those.”  
         At that time, they both turned their heads towards the loading dock door, a truck had just arrived outside.  Rather than continue their dialog they both moved to the door to receive the products they would be needing for the next week.

  
         “G-Man okay?” Thomas questioned in passing.  
         The other man rolled his eyes, “Do I look like some punk-ass hood to you?  Fuck off.”

  
         “Guillaume?”  
         “Fuck the hell off!”

  
         “GM?”  
         “Give up already, you stupid prick!”  Guy-Manuel ordered, slamming his clipboard down on the lunch table.  “You’re just one of those childish, little asshats that’s like ‘oh, I’m special, I’m _different_ , I’m so _crazy_ and I’m ‘random’, you _have_ to like _me_ ’!” his voice reduced itself to a snarl as Thomas flinched back from him, “Listen up, kid,” he took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair before continuing in a calm, quiet voice,  “not everyone is going to like you, not everyone is going to be nice to you.  Most people aren’t even going to care if you exist or are in the dirt beneath their shoes.   _You_ **don’t**.   **Matter**.  Got it?” Guy-Manuel leaned in for effect, “Nobody here cares unless it affects whether or not you can work.  When you leave here, everyone is going to forget you exist.”  
         “B-But then…  You don’t matter either.”  Thomas rebutted, trying to keep himself from feeling the lump in his throat and the ache in his chest.  
         “I know.” Guy-Manuel affirmed in a resigned voice, “I don’t matter, I never did and I never will.”  That was the last time they spoke that night, the bellicose man leaving to clockout.  
         His sixth day was the first day that he laid down in his bed and cried.

\-------

         Another day passed without working a shift with Guy-Manuel which Thomas was grateful for.  No one person had honestly made him cry since he was still in grade school.  It was plain embarrassing…  
         Still, Thomas was wishing for his help by the end of the evening, at least it was a Saturday so there was no truck to receive, just a whole lot of stocking.  There were also some…   _Incidents_ with customers.  These incidents being that they asked him questions he had no idea how to answer.  
         “W-Well, I-I, uh…  I think…  I don’t know.” Was the best way to sum up what he said every time.  Every time he also turned apple red and panicked, looking for another employee.  Social anxiety was one thing, _actually_ embarrassing himself was an entire other kettle of fish.  
         Though, at least on his moments that he didn’t have something to do, he occupied his mind with trying to find things to call the Cry-Man.  Thomas sniggered at the thought of _that_ nickname, but it would be inevitable for Guy-Manuel to ask where it had come from…  Well, it would be if Guy-Manuel was likely to care at all.  In the likelihood of it happening at all, Thomas chose to not use that one.

  
          _Manny?  Some of these suggestions are liable to get you punched_. He observed, letting out a breath as he stared at the dark ceiling overhead.  Turning over in his bed he picked up the tiny remote to his stereo and turned it and its pale, blue light off.   _You’ll come up with something for the crotchety asshat_. He assured himself as he floated off to sleep.

\-------

         “I’m still trying to pick something to call you.” Thomas informed Guy-Manuel, finding him smoking his usual beginning of shift cigarette in the far corner of the loading dock.  
         From his spot on a box, Guy-Manuel gave him a narrow-eyed glare, blowing the stream of his smoke into Thomas’s face.  By the way the expression was set into his features, he was not going to be dignifying that with any kind of answer.  
         The taller man waved the smoke away, taking a box from his back pocket, “Mind if I join you?”  
         His coworker’s eyes flicked to the pack of cigarettes and then back to his face, “If you’re going to violate company policy, don’t do it around me.”  
         “B-But you smoke in here all the time!”  
         “If you saw someone mugging an old lady does that mean you should do it too?” Guy-Manuel bitterly questioned, blowing another stream of smoke at Thomas.  
         “What if I reported you to Stephen?”  
         “So you’re a snitch, then?” Guy-Manuel pulled his eyebrows up slightly as if pitying Thomas.  
         “N-No…  Of course not, I just…”  
         “Wanna be cool?” As he sniggered past his cigarette, Thomas turned bright red.  
         “What’s wrong with wanting to get along with my coworker?” the young man posed, crossing his arms over his chest.  
         “We _do_ get along when you keep your mouth shut and your Groucho Marx nose in your own business.”  
         For a second, Thomas reached up to his nose, fretting that it really was as large as the man was claiming.  He found his earlier embarrassment growing, however as Guy-Manuel started laughing at him.  It was beyond Thomas why it mattered so much for them to be on better terms, especially when he was _this_ much of a jerk.  
         “It wouldn’t even matter if I reported you to Stephen, anyway, would it?”  
         “What a perceptive idiot you are.” Guy-Manuel ground out his cigarette on the rubber of his work shoes.  “He knows there’s nothing he can do about it.”  he snorted, “Apart from firing me which he has tried and failed to do since I was hired, so whatever.”  
         “Why can’t he fire you?  You the owner’s son, or something?” Thomas distastefully enquired.  
         “Because I’m good at my job.”  Guy-Manuel shrugged, “I don’t have anymore answers.  I get to deal with a new one of you bozos at least once every two weeks before you quit or get fired all on your own.” he dropped himself down from his perch and began to swagger on out of the room to go do his job.  
         “You make it sound like it’s not your fault.” Thomas bit under his breath and he saw the man give a pause in his steps.  
         “I’ve never once suggested to anyone that they quit and I’ve never once reported a coworker for something I observed as wrong.”  he pronounced carefully, “Everyone just leaves me all on their own.”  Thomas watched him leave the back dock and let out a breath he hadn’t know to be holding.  He put his cigarettes away and frowned, he supposed that he really wasn’t going to be going anywhere anytime soon.

 

 


	3. Happiness--Hurts

         Over a few frustrating days, Thomas thought of possible, polite, things he could call his coworker that were not either derivatives of his name or variations of "friend".  He supposed he needed to stray off the beaten path and go for more bizarre ones.  Although his suggestions of "fluffy", "huffy" and "short-stack" were met with a "fuck off", an "imbecile" and "anorexic beanpole" in that order.

  
         There was one day, in that same week, that as Thomas made his way to the back, someone called out to him.  Curious at anyone taking even mild interest in his presence, he peered around until his eyes came to the shaggy butcher he had seen his first day on the job.  The same man who had gotten into some sort of secret altercation with Guy-Manuel.  He quickly shuffled over, considering the meat truck wasn’t due anytime soon, he was all agog to know just what he had done to gain any sort of attention.  
         "Uh, yes?" Thomas nervously acknowledged.  
         "How you likin' the job?" The tall man asked, peeling bloody gloves off his hands and tossing them to the garbage.  His voice was low and grainy, but from the lack of wrinkles around his eyes and under his full beard, he couldn't have been that much older than him.  
         "Uh, it's okay..." Thomas muttered, shrugging and looking to the floor a little.  The man hadn't exactly come across as the most personable person in the store before, so it made little sense for him to be initiating any kind of small talk to Thomas.  All the same, he wasn't going to be rude. "My first job, so, I'm still getting used to it."  
         "Oouh." The man commented his face screwing up in an expression of "I'm glad I'm not you".  "I'm sorry, dude."  
         "Hey,  I'm getting paid, so, you know, it's whatever." He swallowed, fiddling with his nails out of the clerk's line of sight.  "Liking it so far."  
         "How's working with the asshat?"  The clerk leaned on the counter, folding his hands.  "Oh, uh, I'm Matt, by the way."  
         "Uh...  Thomas.  He's cool, uh, he's a hard worker." Thomas looked around, hoping his manager or, heaven forbid, a customer needed him.  
         "Yeah, hard worker..."  Matt rolled his eyes.  "Sleeps and smokes the whole time."  
         "He does more than that..."  Thomas defended, not sure why he felt offended on his _offensive_ coworker's behalf.  "I still don't know what I'm doing and shit's getting done." He chuckled awkwardly to ease some of the tension.  
         "Mmn."  Matt nodded with a shrug, "Not thinking about quitting are you?"  
         Thomas shook his head quickly, "Hell no.  I need this job."  
         "Oh, really?"  Matt nodded again and stroked his beard thoughtfully, "Well, there's gonna be a party at my buddy's on Saturday after work." He shrugged,  "If you're gonna be stickin' around, stop by.  Most people coming work here."  
         "Whoa...  Really?" Thomas' s mouth hung open, flabbergasted that a dude he didn't even know would invite him to a party.  "S-Sure!  I'll be there!  Um...  Where does he live?"  
         "Ah...  You work Saturday?"  Matt nodded along as Thomas did.  “Yeah, good, what time do you get off?”  
         Thinking for a second, Thomas replied “22:00, what about you?”  
         “Same, do you drive?”  
         He shook his head in response, “I take the bus.”  
         “Ah, well, you can just hitch a ride with me.  Just let me know when you come in if you’re still going or not.  I don’t want to be waiting around all night when I could be having a few drinks.” he chuckled heartily, Thomas doing so along with him, albeit, more uncomfortable than he wanted to lead on.  “Well, eh, see you then?”  Matt questioned, raising an eyebrow as he noticed Thomas wasn’t really saying anything back.  
         “Y-Yeah!  Of course!  I, uh, n-need to get to work and all…  So, uh… Bye.”  
         “See ya…”  Matt cast him a peculiar look as Thomas walked away, shrugging his shoulders in the end and going back about whatever he had been prior.  
         That night appeared to be another night with Guy-Manuel by the prominent scent of tobacco in the back dock.  He wasn’t going to let that fact dampen his evening though, he had just been invited to a party!  
         “Assfuck, you need to stock aisle sixteen.”  Guy-Manuel ordered, a cigarette hanging from between his lips and a bag of peeled apple slices in hand.  
         “Yes, uh…  Uh…   _Pomm_ -Man…”  
         “What?”  Guy-Manuel called after him as he ran off to locate the cart for aisle sixteen.

          
         They finally came to their fourth consecutive shift together when Thomas approached Guy-Manuel with yet another suggestion.  Craning his neck up--Guy-Manuel had slowly taken higher and higher perches as their time together had gone on--he called up the stack of items to his coworker taking his traditional before-shift smoke. "Yo!  I think I found one!"  Unlike previous days, Thomas found Guy-Manuel readily acknowledging his presence.  With a pair of raised eyebrows, he peered down at him, breathing out a stream of smoke, yet remaining silent as instead he bit into a half-eaten apple.  
         “Boss?”  Thomas offered, sure, Guy-Manuel wasn’t his boss, but he was great at his job and so maybe he would just take it as a compliment.  
         “You’re never going to stop trying, are you?”  the man, who Thomas had come to believe was significantly older than him observed wearily.  He took two more bites from his apple.  
         “Is that a yes?”  Thomas hopefully called up.  
         “Your persistence is obnoxious.  No!”  
         “I don’t want to call you ‘asshole’, ‘douchebag’ or ‘f-fucker’ though!”  the younger man argued.  
         “ _Dumbfuck_ was your last option.”  Guy-Manuel corrected, down to the core of his food.  
         “I still don’t want to call you those things…”  
         The elder of the two rolled his eyes, biting the core in half and swallowing it.  
         “What about…”  he stopped to take a nervous breath, “Ch-Chéri?”  Thomas proposed, more as an attempt to get Guy-Manuel to laugh than anything else.  There had to be a sense of humor in there somewhere.  
         “Why the fuck would I let you call me that?”  Guy-Manuel raised his eyebrow at him, dropping down from the boxes to stand in front of him “Are you some kind of faggot?”  He swallowed the second half of the core...  
         Stumbling backwards, Thomas shrugged, “I-I just thought that…  I don’t know?  An inside joke, or…  Or something?”  Slowly, he reached up to rub the back of his neck, clearing his voice.  “I just don’t…  Feel right insulting someone who’s so much better at my job than me…”  
         “Mn.”  Guy-Manuel leaned back on the stack behind him and crossed his ankles, looking Thomas up and down.  “Chéri, huh?” His lips twitched as if he was about to give in to the first smile Thomas had ever seen from him.  “And…  You’re going to use this as my _normal_ address, yeah?”  
         “Well…  You’re not letting me call you by your real name, so I don’t have any other choice.”  
         “Mn, before I say anything else, why not try calling me by my name _anyway_?  You’re my coworker, so at some point I would have to, logically, listen to whatever it is you have to say as it might be important.” Lifting his foot, Guy-Manuel ground out his cigarette against the sole of his shoe.  
         The thought had never really even occurred to Thomas…  “Uh…  B-Because you don’t want me to call you that…  So, I’d rather find something you’ll let me call you that’s respectful.”  
         “I’m an asshole, why do you care what I want when I clearly don’t care about what _you_ want?” he folded his arms over his chest.  
         “Because whether or not you care what I want doesn’t mean you’re undeserving of respect.” Thomas swallowed, feeling his intense gaze burn through him, “You just don’t have time for other people’s bullshit.”  
         “You’re such a proper little brat, aren’t you?”  the older man huffed as he stepped away from the box stack.  
         “I-I guess…”  Thomas looked down to the ground, feeling his cheeks grow hot.  
         “No spine either.” Guy-Manuel scoffed.  
         “The understanding that I should treat you the way that I want to be treated even if you’re not going to reciprocate does not mean I’m spineless.”  Thomas argued.  
         “So you think you’re better than me then?”  Guy-Manuel hissed with a scowl.  
         “No, it means I don’t give a fuck that you’re a rude, insufferable prick, because you’re still a person.”  
         The two stared at each other for another fifteen seconds, completely silent.  
         “My name is Chéri.”  Guy-Manuel broke their silence.  “Fine.” he left the room, grabbing his clipboard and a sandwich from the back table.

  
         “Eh-em…”  Thomas cleared his throat, seeing that Guy-Manuel was amid conversation with two fellow co-workers the following day.  Granted, these two worked front-end, so he was curious what they were doing back in the dairy department that day.  It wasn’t like he was embarrassed by their very presence, he saw them nearly every day once arriving at work, but…  Thomas honestly hadn’t given much thought to how he was going to come off to others in the store with the new name he had chosen to call Guy-Manuel…  “Eh, Chéri?”  
         “One second,” Guy-Manuel held up a finger at the two other boys he was speaking two.  They appeared quite astonished, one’s mouth hanging open at Thomas, the other attempting not to laugh, “What do you need, douchebag?”  In one hand, he held a half-eaten chocolate-filled croissant, a receipt for it clearly poking out of the pocket of his slacks.  
         “Ah-ah, I just wasn’t sure where…  Um…”  Thomas looked down to the box he was holding, “W-Where--”  
         “To- _day_ Bibbit!”  Guy-Manuel urged.  
         “J-Just shoestrings a-and shoe polish, a-a--”  
         “Ugh,” Guy-Manuel grunted, “bye guys, I gotta show the greenhorn where the fuck his shit goes.” he bid the boys adieu as they sniggered at their backs.  
         “Y-You don’t have to sh-show me…”  Thomas followed behind him, trying to lessen some of Guy-Manuel’s apparent irritation, “Just t-tell me the--”  
         “It’s this one.”  Guy-Manuel ignored his gibbering, turning down it.  “It’s easy to miss.” he kept speaking, “Because those items ended up with the rest of miscellany and are kept on the bottom shelf.”  The older man stopped and pointed down to the two lowest shelves, “See what I mean?” he swallowed what was left of his croissant.  
         Thomas supposed he did, seeing as both the shelves were completely empty.  However, he found it distinctly distracting to focus on the shelves he had to fill when Guy-Manuel had taken to licking chocolate off his fingers.  His elegant, experienced fingers…  
         “You’ll catch flies in there, douchebag.”  Guy-Manuel shook him out of the fantasies he didn’t even know he had been having.  He also closed his mouth with a “pop” knowing exactly what he had been referring to.  “Creepily staring at people a hobby of yours?”  
         “I-I was just waiting for…  Uh…  N-Nevermind, thank you, Chéri…”  
         Guy-Manuel waved him off, starting again for the back room, as he did so, he collided straight with a customer, their items dropping out of the basket on their arm all over the floor.  As Thomas put his box down and rushed to help the person, all he heard from Guy-Manuel was “Watch where you’re going next time.”  Before walking off and leaving Thomas to deal with the griping customer.

  
         That same night, with only two hours left on shift and waiting for the meat truck to arrive, Guy-Manuel and Thomas sat around the lunch table.  As his counterpart stuffed a large sandwich into his mouth and tore off a piece with a crunch, Thomas had noticed something in the recent days working with him.  
         “Chéri…”  He began, Guy-Manuel lifting his gaze from the clipboard nestled in his lap, “Are you, uh, are you American, by chance?”  
         With a deadpan stare, Guy-Manuel removed the sandwich from his mouth and set it down on the plastic wrap from whence it came, “My name is Guillaume Emmanuel de Homem-Christo; you tell me, douchebag.”  
         “I-I was just wondering because, uh…”  
         “Because….  Why?” Guy-Manuel urged him in a patronizing voice, picking up his sandwich again and violently tearing off another piece.  
         “W-Well…  Uh…  I’ve just, uh…  Never met someone that snacks as much as you do.”  Thomas’s voice dwindled to little more than a timid murmur by the end of his explanation, his eyes drifting slowly down to the collection of foods he had brought for his own dinner.  
         “So you’re calling me fat?”  Guy-Manuel posed, taking another slow bite off his food.  
         “No!”  Thomas quickly emended.  
         “You’re _one_ rude motherfucker.”  
         “No!  No!  That wasn’t what I meant!  I-I-I….”  He took a deep breath and sighed, holding his face in his hands as it turned bright red.  
         For just a second, he could’ve swore he heard his coworker chuckle under his breath, “What _did_ you mean, then?”  
         “I-I meant that…  Just whenever I see you you’re either smoking or eating or both.”  Thomas smiled sheepishly, “I’ve not met someone like that outside of school, is all.  
         “You have an incredibly small world if that’s the case.”  Guy-Manuel bit into his sandwich again.  
         “I guess I don’t really do much…”  Thomas commented, poking at his food and finding he wasn’t hungry.  
         “Sucks to be you.”  
         Thomas was silent, nodding.  He nibbled a little on the carrots he had brought with him, but overall forwent the food.  As he began to put it all away, Guy-Manuel asked, “How old are you, kid?”  
         “Eighteen.”  he muttered.  
         “And you’re _this_ boring?  Maybe if you were sixteen, I’d understand.”  Guy-Manuel shrugged, “I didn’t expect you to be so close to my age with how you act.”  
         “W-What?”  Thomas blinked at him, “I thought you were like…  Twenty-five at least.”  
         Guy-Manuel snorted and rolled his eyes, “I’m nineteen.”  
         “Really?!”  
         The other man gritted his teeth, “Saying I look old, douchebag?”  
         “N-No, I’m, I’m…”   _I’m saying you’re so disenchanted and cynical…_  “You just don’t seem happy.”  Thomas settled upon with a sigh.  
         “Happiness has nothing to do with age.”  Guy-Manuel huffed, “I’m plenty happy.”  He somehow crammed the rest of his sandwich into his mouth, adamantly chewing.  
         “If you say so, Chéri.”  
         “You’re obnoxious.”  Guy-Manuel spoke.  “You almost sound like you give a fuck.”  
         “I do.”  Thomas shrugged.  “How is that obnoxious?”  
         “Because you have to worry about yourself first.”  
         “I’m not worried about myself though.  Except for this job I _am_ happy.”  
         “Well, good for-fucking-you.”  
         “But you _are_ unhappy…”  
         “No one’s happy.”  Guy-Manuel snorted and stood.  “You’re too young to know what happiness is.”  
         “I can’t agree with that.”  Thomas rebutted, “Because just as I cannot discount that you know what’s like to be unhappy, you cannot say that I don’t know what it’s like to be happy.”  he took in a breath and sighed, “Everyone experiences life differently.”  
         “You’re an aspiring intellectual, aren’t you?”  Guy-Manuel bit sourly.  
         Thomas shrugged, “Sound engineer.”  
         “How quaint.” the other man scoffed, turning to leave the lunch table and get lost among the stacks of boxes.  
         “What do _you_ want to do?”  Thomas asked.  
         “Uh…”  Guy-Manuel paused as if never having had to answer such a question before, “To get you to shut up.”  he hostilely copped out.  
         “Do you not know?”  
         “Just shut the fuck up and leave me alone.”  Instead of heading for the box maze, Guy-Manuel left the back dock, sweeping out the doors with a huff.


	4. Space In My Heart--Bernhoft

         Friday ended up being a boring day.  Thomas hadn't _meant_ for it to be, but waking up shivering and vomiting was also something he hadn't meant to happen.  Having to call-in to work was probably the worst part about it.  He hadn't even been there a month and he was already developing bad habits...  In his eyes, these were bad habits.  Inexplicably,  however, he thought _Chéri_ is going to be so pissed. before he hid his face in his pillow.  
         Never mind, the worst part about this was he was going to be catching hell from the irascible man.  He shouldn’t have cared as much as he did, but he had already long-assessed that there was more to his own motivations than mere wanting to get along with him.  Thomas wasn’t entirely sure of what those motivations _were_ , but he knew there was something he felt every time he went to the foot of a box stack, waiting for Guy-Manuel-- _Chéri_ \--to look at him.  
          _I_ _must be some kind of masochist._  He thought to himself, feeling his stomach roll over inside, but managing to keep himself together.  Feeling his phone vibrate, he picked it up and viewed the screen, his eyes squinted with grogginess, “Not now, Julian.” he muttered to the man that couldn’t hear him.  Instead of answering the phone, he declined the call and tossed it away to somewhere in the sea of his comforter and sheets.  He could just say he had lost the thing again.  Of course though, by now, his entire circle of friends knew that when he said “Yeah, I lost it again” it really meant “I just didn’t want to talk to you”.  It was nothing personal against any of them, he wouldn’t have kept them as his friends if it was, but sometimes he was just so tired of people.  He had to spend all day at work pleasing other people and he had a conceivable lifetime of having to do just that to get anywhere.  “Me time” had been a nigh unheard of thing for him in high school.  
         When the phone vibrated again, indicating a voicemail, Thomas grunted and sifted around for the device, grasping it and holding it to his ear.  He dialed the number and the password and waited for the machine to pick up.  
         “I saw you said you were sick on your Facebook, I wanted to know if there was anything I could get you…  Either you’re asleep or you’re screening my calls again and you know it worries me when you do that.”  Thomas frowned at the concern in his friend’s voice, “If that asshole at your job said something else, I’ll…  Never mind.”  Julian chuckled then, “Okay, chick message done, just call me back when you get this message.”  
         Thomas murmured a series of nonsense syllables to himself, Julian had a bad habit of treating him like glass in the last year.  It really had been a bad idea to tell him that Guy-Manuel had made him cry, but…  At least it was nice that Thomas had someone to tell at all who wouldn’t tease him for it.  For a moment he considered calling him back and apologizing, but he really had nothing to apologize for…  He could always apologize for worrying him, but he felt more like sleeping.  Julian would still be there when he woke up, after all…  
         Dialing Julian’s number, Thomas held the phone to his ear.  He grinned in spite of his sour situation when his friend picked up as if he were surprised by who was calling.  Predictably, Thomas apologized for worrying him and also set to bed that he was just sick.  No, Guy-Manuel…  Er, Chéri, hadn’t said something either, things were actually going better between them…  
         “Chéri?”  Julian questioned, “Last time I heard you call someone that you were attached to this girl’s hem, dude.”  
         “A-Ah… It’s not like that.  I meant for it to be a joke and…  And he said it was okay.”  
         “Sounds like one queer guy…”  
         “He’s…  Yeah, he’s a bit different and he’s rude to everyone, but I guess I should be happy that it means it’s nothing against me personally; he hates everyone.”  Thomas chuckled a little.  
         “Prick.”  
         “Maybe a little…”  
         “Thomas!?”  An older woman’s voice called from on the other side of his closed door.  
         “Yes, Granny?!”  Thomas called back, holding the phone away from his ear.  
         “You need to be resting, hang up the phone!”  She chastised.  
         “Okay…”  He sighed against the covers and shifted to a better position that didn’t irritate his stomach as much.  “I gotta go Julian…”  
         “Get some rest, man.”  
         Thomas ended the call and tossed the phone away again, taking in another deep breath before reaching for the remote for his stereo system.  Perhaps putting on some music would help.

\-------

         Shuffling into work Saturday afternoon, Thomas wasn’t all that confident about how well he was going to do.  His stomach still bothered him and dealing with a potentially furious Guy-Manuel was not at the top of his list of things to do.  As he walked to the back of the store, he felt his anxiety mount until he could hear his blood rush through his ears and his heart hammer out of his chest.  If this kept up, he was going to throw up on whomever got close enough.  
         With a push, he parted the doors to the back hallway and made his way to the loading dock.  A quick whiff of smoke told Thomas the dreaded man was in the room, so he tipped his face upwards, searching the tops of pallets and boxes for him.  Curiously, he didn’t see him, reaching a hand up, he played with his thick, curly hair and muttered, “Where is he?”  
          “And here I thought you had quit.”  Came from behind him.  
          Startled, Thomas wheeled around, finding Guy-Manuel sitting at the lunch table by the door.  Apparently he had completely missed that anyone had been sitting there at all…  Unsurprisingly, he had a small collection of food, most of it unopened, sitting before him.  At least he didn’t seem angry.  
         “Really?”  Thomas questioned with a frown.  
         “This is right about the time that everyone quits.”  the shorter man shrugged.  
         “Sorry to ruin that fantasy.”  he responded with a shrug, pulling a chair out to sit down.  
         “Whoever said it was a fantasy?  It makes my job easier to have you jackoffs around.”  His eyes rolled up towards the ceiling for a moment, taking a drag off his cigarette before he looked back to Thomas, “Most of the time.  Sometimes you fuckers just make shit worse.”  
         “And…  W-What category do I fit in?”  
         Guy-Manuel scoffed, “Which do you think?”  
         “Oh…”  Thomas’s frown deepened.  
         “H-Hey, no--” Guy-Manuel made a frustrated noise, “You’re competent, douchebag.”  
         “You know, Chéri, I have a name…”  
         “What were you sick with?”  Guy-Manuel skipped over the comment with another drag off his cigarette.  
         “Stomach flu.” Thomas explained in a resigned voice.  
         “You’re not contagious are you?”  the shorter man’s eyes darted up and down his long body with more than a little worry.  
         “No, I don’t think so.  If I ever was and it’s not because I have food poisoning or something, it would’ve been before I actually started throwin--”  
         “Shut up!  I don’t need to hear about this!”  Guy-Manuel stood, Thomas raising an eyebrow at him.  
         “Vomi--”  
         “Shut up!”  Thomas smirked at him.  
         “Pu--”  
         “What is wrong with you?!”  The shorter man growled at him and Thomas chuckled.  
         Thomas made a gagging noise in the back of his throat and bent forward, watching as the unadulterated terror shot across Guy-Manuel’s face for a half-second, “Does someone have a fear of--”  
         “No!”  he paused, his face beginning to turn red, “Maybe…”  Guy-Manuel clicked his tongue and looked away from him, “Yes.  But that is _not_ your cue to make those awful noises!”  
         “I’m sorry.”  Thomas smiled at him.  
         “Mnh…”  All Thomas was really thinking about as the stubborn man said nothing was just how red his face was getting.  He had been sure before that it was nearly impossible to get him to do something that seemed to happen to him at least once hourly.  Guy-Manuel crossed his arms over his chest and grumbled under his breath.  
         “Excuse me?”  
         “I said it’s okay.” he turned on his heel and stalked from the room.

  
         “Yo!  Thomas!”  The skinny youth jumped at his name and spun around, looking frantically for the one who had called him and found Matt motioning to him from behind the meat counter.  
         Scurrying right over to him, Thomas asked, “What’s up?”  
         “Still coming tonight?”  Matt questioned, stroking his goatee and playing with the ends of his hairs.  
         Though Thomas knew he should say “no”, he was still sick after all, he instead said “You bet!”  
         Nodding thoughtfully, Matt looked from Thomas down to the order he had sitting on the back end of the counter, “Cool, I’ll just wait out front for you when I get off.”  
         “Yeah, that sounds good.”  
         “You work tomorrow?”  
         “No, it’s my day off.”  
         Matt chuckled, “I’m not so lucky.”  
         “Hey, douchebag!”  Both of the conversing men turned their heads at the utter audacity of someone yelling an insult across the store.  Thomas, however, did so with a great deal more franticity, his heart pounding in his chest and breath catching in his throat.  
        “Y-Yes, Chéri?!”  He called to the shorter man pointing at the pallet he had abandoned in favor of speaking to Matt.  As Matt was not the only person behind the meat counter and there were other employees about, Thomas heard an array of snickers chase each other around his area as everyone looked from him to Guy-Manuel.  Feeling his face grow hot and the pounding in his chest harder, he skittered back to his job, wishing the floor could just swallow him up.  This had to be why Guy-Manuel had agreed to the nickname, just so he could humiliate him; he found all he needed as far as proof went as he noticed Guy-Manuel was also sniggering under his breath.  
         “Don’t just leave your shit laying around.”  Guy-Manuel chastised him, “It takes up a lot of space.”  
         “Did you have to do that?”  Thomas murmured.  
         “Do what?” Guy-Manuel scoffed and folded his arms over his chest.  
         “T- _That_ …”  the young man motioned over his shoulder, quickly whipping his gaze back to Guy-Manuel when he saw a few people staring.  
          Guy-Manuel snorted, his humor sounding malicious to Thomas, “I didn’t do anything.  You’re the one that embarrassed yourself.”  
         “B-But, I…”  Thomas sighed, looking to the floor, bringing his fingers together and starting to pick at his nails.  
         “Why do you care what those assholes think anyway?”  Guy-Manuel grumbled, “They don’t matter.”  
         “I was hoping to make friends…”  Thomas muttered.  
         “So?  If they’re going to make fun of you for calling me ‘Darling’, they can suck it.  They’re not worth trying to be friends with.”  
         Tentatively, Thomas lifted his eyes to Guy-Manuel, “You think so?”  
         “I know so.”  For a half-second, Guy-Manuel made to unfold his arms, but apparently thought better of it as he instead just kept them folded, tighter at that.  “Go put this shit away, I need your help reorganizing the back dock.”  He shrugged in the direction of the aisle Thomas needed before strolling away, a candy-bar sticking out of his back pocket.

\-------

         The rest of the shift flew by, Guy-Manuel saying very few words as was normal and cramming various snacks into his mouth as was also normal.  Thomas tried his hardest not to think of their exchange earlier, but each time he told himself Guy-Manuel hadn’t been trying to cheer him up he just went right back to the question of “what if?”.  It made for an awkward evening for him to be honest, because he was pretty sure Guy-Manuel had noticed him staring once or twice and had merely chosen against commenting upon it.  
         Two minutes until the end of shift, and Guy-Manuel was nowhere to be seen, frankly.  They had both long finished their tasks and had just been doing minor cleaning duties, waiting for time to run out.  Thomas supposed he should’ve been glad for it because it meant that he wasn’t keeping Matt waiting.  Discarding the broom and dustpan in their proper place, Thomas grabbed his things from the lunch table and trotted through the back hallway to the sales floor.  
         It was easy to locate Matt as he stood leaning against the glass meat case, a pair of aviator shades over his eyes.  Didn’t he know that only no-talent douchebags wore sunglasses at night?  Let alone inside…  Someone really needed to educate him and soon.  
         “You off the clock?”  Matt questioned upon seeing him.  
         “Yeah…  We ready to go?”  Matt nodded to him and they left the building together, Thomas climbing into his car which looked like it had been old when it was new.  “When the hell is this car from?”  he chuckled at the conjoined front seats.  
         “Mid or late eighties, I don’t remember.”  Matt shrugged, reaching into the glove box in front of Thomas to pull out what appeared to be a joint.  “Want a hit?”  He asked, lighting up.  
         “S-Sure, I’ll take one…”  Thomas accepted the joint from Matt’s scarred fingers before the same fingers inserted the key into the car’s ignition and the decades-old engine roared to life.  
         As Matt pulled out of the parking lot of the store, he inserted a tape into the player, Grateful Dead beginning to fill the car.  Thomas had to keep himself from chuckling, but that turned out to be quite easy as he started coughing instead.  He passed the joint back to his driver and let him take a smooth couple of hits.  
         “Oh, one more thing,” Matt began as they rolled to a jerking stop at a traffic light, “my brakes need to be replaced.”  
         Thomas stared at him for a few moments, but by the way Matt’s eyes were so firmly fixed on the road from behind his unnecessary shades, he doubted he would notice, “I think I’m going to need another hit…”  Thomas solemnly told him, taking the joint between his fingers and taking a drag off it as they continued their trek towards the party.

  
         The part about them rolling up to the house and Thomas ejecting himself from the car to love on the sweetness of the Earth as the dulcet, lilting tones of Jerry Garcia rolled in his noggin aside, the ride wasn’t bad.  Matt chuckled and stepped around the car’s hood, closing Thomas’s door, “It’s gonna be all right, man.”  he told him, stepping towards the small house and motioning for Thomas to follow him.  
         There was no amount of weed that could’ve made that ride any less terrifying, Thomas was sure.  Unless, of course there was a significant amount _more_ of weed inside the house, then at least the terror had been worth it.  He already was starting to feel the high come upon him, as it turned out that Matt’s buddy didn’t live all that far from their place of employment.  
         Matt had already shoved open the door as Thomas arrived at it’s step and just followed him inside.  Loud music filled the house, vibrating the walls and nearly drowning out the sounds of voices as everyone laughed, drank and carried on gaily.  The bigger man hadn’t gotten two steps inside before he was assaulted by an even larger man, they were about the same height, but the other man had a bit more muscle on him.  Thomas internally remarked never to get on the bigger guy’s bad side because he was pretty sure the man could’ve broken every bone in his body with just his pinky finger.  It should also be made known that “assault” in this case meant Matt being picked up from the floor in a bearhug.  
         “Hey, dude.”  Matt placidly responded, taking his sunglasses off to reveal how bloodshot his eyes were.  “This is the new guy, Thomas.”  he explained, motioning to Thomas as he was lowered back down to the floor.  
         “What’s up, man?” The larger man greeted in a jovial way, the openness of his face and smile completely detracting from his intimidating body type.  If Thomas were feeling like saying every last thing on his mind because he was high he would’ve said--  
         “You’re a viking…” his mouth gaped only slightly.  
         “Yeah, I get that a lot.” the host of the party laughed merrily, “I’m Bern.”  
         Thomas chuckled, thinking and unfortunately saying, “Your name is a verb.” he paused, “Spelled different though.”  
         “You gave him some of your shit didn’t you?”  Bern asked Matt and the opposite man shrugged as if to say “How could I not?”.  The big man shrugged to his long-haired friend and looked back down to Thomas, “Make yourself at home--”  
         Before Bern could even finish his sentence, he was cut off by the loud sound of a series of rhythmic record scratches.  As the host of the party scoffed and narrowed his eyes towards the main living room, Thomas grinned at the familiar sound.  He had to give whomever was responsible some respect as he cut back to the track that had been playing before seamlessly.  The urge to find the person and check their setup--did they use a laptop or actual turntables?--was insurmountable, but amid his joy, he heard Bern mumble, “He’s doing that shit again.”  Surprised that Bern didn’t approve of some rather obvious talent as the music played on in the background, he wrinkled his brow up at him in confusion.  
         “Hey, he’s free.”  Matt shrugged to his buddy.  
         “I think this is awesome!”  Thomas chuckled, albeit, feeling the need to sink away and into a dark corner at the way the two intimidating men looked down at him.  “Ehm…”  
         “You should go meet him.”  Bern smirked.  
         “If you really like what you hear.”  Matt was smirking too…  
         “I’m sure he’d love--”  
         “--to hear what you have to say.”  Both men chuckled, Bern giving the man who had finished his sentence a hard shove with another conspiratorial laugh.  
         Thomas swallowed thickly, looking between them before clearing his throat, “S-So, uh, why do you guys h-have a DJ at your party you don’t even like?”  
         Matt shrugged in tandem with Bern, “We don’t hate him.”  He explained, “He’s just difficult sometimes.  He’s one of our friends, so he doesn’t make us pay him--”  
         “--which is a plus--” Bern added to the stream of Matt’s explanation.  
         “--and when he’s not doing--”  Matt was cut off by more scratching, followed by a slew of samples in the stream of the DJ’s mix, “--not doing _this_ , the music he plays is great.”  
         “But this _is_ great…” Thomas asserted again, suppressing his need to gyrate his hips to the beat.  He swallowed thickly again as Matt’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead and Bern scrunched his face in disbelief.  “Ah-Ah-I mean…  He isn’t phenomenal, but he has t-talent.”  
         “Whatever, man.” the two men replied.  
         “To each his own.” Matt pushed by him into the kitchen then, grabbing what appeared to be a bottle of some kind of rectified alcohol before slipping into the living room.  Without another word, Bern gave Thomas a little bit of an awkward smile before pursuing his friend.  
         Frowning, Thomas sighed, he kind of wished he liked the more contemporary styles of DJ-ing, which, he didn’t _hate_ them, he just preferred older sounds.  He was truthfully surprised that Matt and Bern didn’t seem to care for the sick beats being belted from the living room given that it was more than obvious they were older than him.  As he went to the kitchen and picked up a beer his mind mirrored Matt’s words _To each his own._  
         Opening and sipping on his beer, he wandered away from the entrance of the house that held a cluttered table of purses, ashtrays and discarded alcohol containers to the crowded living room.  As he saw the slew of people all dancing quite enthusiastically to the beat of the current song the DJ had going, Thomas realized that his subpar dancing skills really wouldn’t matter at all.  Most of what he was seeing was flailing and people grinding up on each other--hell yeah--these people made him look like he could be on Soul Train.  
         Bolting his beer, he tossed the empty bottle into a nearby garbage can, it making the distinctive “klank!” of glass meeting a wealth of more glass.  At about the same time that he started to dance, he felt a glass pipe shoved into his hands.  He didn’t know who it was from, but the same hands passed him a lighter and he wasn’t going to deny more weed.  After a decent couple of hits, he passed the bowl and lighter to another random person who, of course, accepted it graciously and did the same.  
         Gyrating his hips as his blissful high overtook him and twisting his body to the intoxicating beat of the music, Thomas made his way through the cluster of people.  Being as tall as he was, however, it didn’t take long for him to catch sight of a setup of turntables nestled in the back.  With skyrocketing respect for the party’s DJ, Thomas grinned and looked to the figure bent over table.  The grin faltered for a moment, however, as he saw a sheet of long, brown hair between him and the DJ’s face, a sheet of hair he was well-accustomed to.  
         As Guy-Manuel lifted his head up from what he was focused on, he tossed his hair up over his shoulder, a joint poking from between his lips.  A puff of thick smoke expelled from his nose as Thomas kept his eyes fixed on Guy-Manuel’s hands, as his right hand scratched at one record, his other hand whipped about the board.  He twisted knobs and slid faders about with enviable speed and Thomas’s mouth hung open in amazement.  His coworker bobbed his body to and fro with the beat of his music and without warning, he looked up straight at him.  Or Thomas more would’ve described straight _through_ him.  The effects of drugs and alcohol had not taken any ounce of intensity away from his eyes and Thomas felt his heart skip a beat.  
         The older man wagged his eyebrows at him in an uncustomary show of familiarity.  Regardless of whether or not it really was too loud to hear him speak, Thomas didn’t need any help understanding the words Guy-Manuel mouthed to him “You’ll catch flies in there”.  He closed his mouth with a sheepish smile, watching as his coworker smirked at him and brought his fingers up to his lips to remove his joint.  When the man across from him let his hit out of his mouth, the opaque smoke rolled right into Thomas’s face.  
         Playfully batting the smoke away, and feeling bold, Thomas reached across Guy-Manuel’s setup, laying his hands on the record to give it a short couple of scratches.  At first, the man looked outraged, ready to perhaps hit him over the head or at the very least shove him away, however, as Thomas continued to fiddle with the table and its contents from the wrong side with a good deal of proficiency, the fury faded.  Guy-Manuel gave him a mischievous simper, knocking his hands away from the knobs as he let Thomas continue his hand with the crossfaders.  
         Carding his hands through his sheeny hair, he combed it over to the side opposite Thomas, holding him in eye contact for a few moments as he reached for a new record.  Without needing to explain, Thomas removed his hand from the inactive record, the second one continuing to play as Guy-Manuel switched the first for the new vinyl.  Dropping the needle down, Thomas resumed his earlier stance as they crossed to the new record that had gotten up to speed.  With a growing grin on his young face, Thomas gleefully aided Guy-Manuel with his “set”, the man seemingly quite impressed with his natural feel for the music.  
         There were only a few things Guy-Manuel had chosen to vito and in lieu of those decisions, he wordlessly exhibited how to execute something better.  Motioning for Thomas to give them a try as he knew he was avidly observing everything he did, a small smile pulled at his lips.  The barely-there smile turned into a wider, more sincere one, however, as he began to notice the way Thomas’s hips thrust back and forth to the beat of the music.  He let out an inaudible snort of humor as he allowed himself to wave his head and shoulders from side to side with him.  If Thomas was going to be having so much fun, he might as well not let the kid upstage him.  
         While the two of them were certainly having a ball messing around with the music, the audience of the party was less than pleased with all the experiments going on.  After some disgruntled noises and a loud yell of “stop fucking around!”, Guy-Manuel huffed and pawed Thomas’s hands away from the table.  He grunted and laid some kitschy pop album on the table, he dropped the needle down, crossfading over to it with a hit off his joint.  There were more disgruntled noises, but they ceased as he held up the one-finger salute to the party and walked off.  
         As he watched Guy-Manuel go, Thomas couldn’t help but fear for the health of the table.  People obviously weren’t happy and he didn’t want to risk someone who didn’t know what to do messing with it…  With a frown he looked about the room and saw that no one was incredibly willing to approach the setup.  Instead the party had mostly traveled away from the speakers and were huddled in small groups of friends drinking or they were playing some kind of card game around a table or beerpong.  Thomas supposed that maybe he had nothing to worry about after all and so left the room to pursue Guy-Manuel.  
         “Chéri?”  Thomas called after him as he stepped out into the warm night air of the patio.   A couple of people who sat in a circle not far from the door looked over to him with interest, they were each busy smoking a cigarette.  Thomas smiled awkwardly and chuckled just as awkwardly as he waved his hand “hi”, but really said nothing as he strolled off to the darker end of the house.  He peered around the brick corner and saw the cherry light of a cigarette in the darkness.  It’s warm light illuminated Guy-Manuel’s delicate features with harsh shadows, the sight sped up Thomas’s heart.  
         “What’s up?”  the other man greeted him, his eyes fixed on something off in the dark distance.  
         “I really like your style.” Thomas blurted out, seeing Guy-Manuel give only the second smile he’d ever seen from him to the ground.  
         “Thanks.” The smile disappeared and he turned to look over at Thomas, “Need a smoke?”  
         “I have my o--”  
         “Need a smoke?”  Guy-Manuel reiterated through gritted teeth.  
         “S-Sure…”  Pacing over to him, Thomas accepted a proffered cigarette and slipped it between his lips.  The other man offered his lighter to him and he took his first drag off it.  “Mmmn…”  Thomas leaned his head back against the house behind him with a smile, his head pleasantly buzzing and body still throbbing from the musical congress inside.  “You’re awesome.”  Rolled out of his lips before he thought to stop it and he heard Guy-Manuel snigger.  
         The other man scoffed, “You’re a daft idiot.”  
         “No, I really loved it, Chéri.”  
         “Mng, what are you, some kind of queer?”  His coworker asked, Thomas being able to hear the roll of his eyes in his voice.  
         “I haven’t really thought about it.” Thomas honestly answered, again, without thought.  He realized that he should’ve been embarrassed by such an admission, however, he felt that Guy-Manuel was the one least likely to care at the whole party.  
         “Really?”  
         “It just never seemed important.” he shrugged against the rough wall at his back.  
         Nodding, the other man took a drag off his cigarette and watched the smoke float away in the temperate night air.  They listened to the crickets and frogs make their music for a few moments.  It was something that both the men were grateful for, they got the soothing sounds of nature without the city being any more than ten minutes away from where they stood.  
         “You?”  Thomas broke their silence in a peaceful voice.  
         “Yeah.” Guy-Manuel simply answered after a moment’s hesitation.  
         “Some kind?”  
         “Some kind.”  Guy-Manuel likewise smiled in spite of himself, giving a single “hah” of humor under his breath.  “So I’m awesome, huh, douchebag?”  
         “You have talent, Chéri.”  Thomas responded, letting his eyes dip open in a tranquil way to look at him.  
         “You too.  You worked my board backwards.”  
         “I know my way around one or two.”  Thomas chuckled lightly.  
         “You mean ones and twos?”  Guy-Manuel joked.  
         “Yeah.”  Thomas laughed, “That’s how I spin.”  
         “Aren’t you a bit young for that?”  
         “I could say the same for you.”  
         “You’re a hipster, aren’t you?”  
         “Are you one?”  
         “I guess.”  Guy-Manuel snorted, “I need the glasses and shit though.”  
         “I must be a hipster too.” Thomas took another drag off his cigarette and let the smoke out in a long stream.  
         “Nah, I don’t hear you saying you liked shit before it was cool.”  
         “I don’t think I could grow a beard even if I tried.”  
         Guy-Manuel shrugged, “I can at least get a mustache.”  
         “Speaking of beards and mustaches…  I didn’t know you were friends with Matt.”  Thomas segued to other topics.  
         “There’s a lot you don’t know.”  Guy-Manuel huffed, “But we went to high school together.” he nonetheless provided.  “Mathieu’s a hippie with anger management issues if you can believe that.”  
         “Whoa…  He’s your age?”  
         “No, he graduated two classes above me.” he sighed, “I got to go to some kickin’ univeristy parties in those days…  We met Bernerd at the same party together.”  
         It somehow surprised Thomas to learn that they actually sounded like they were really _good_ friends…  The way the two had talked about him, he really wouldn’t have guessed at all.  Perhaps though that had something to do with the way Guy-Manuel treated most all new people.  For a reason Thomas was having trouble fathoming, he felt sad.  
         “I think he really…”  Guy-Manuel trailed off and sighed out another pillar smoke instead.  
         “What do you think?”  Thomas prompted, wondering what he caused the cessation of speaking.  
         “It’s not important.”  
         “You started to say it though, so it must’ve had some meaning.”  
         “It’s not your problem.”  Guy-Manuel huffed, clicking his teeth.  
         “Okay.” Thomas yielded; this was the most he had heard from Guy-Manuel in one night and he wasn’t going to push his luck.  
         “Did Mathieu invite you tonight?”  
         “Does that annoy you?”  
         The shorter man clicked his tongue, “I thought it did.”  
         “So…  Does it…  Not?”  
         He shrugged, “I don’t think so.”  
         More silence ensued as Guy-Manuel ground out his cigarette on the house’s wall.  Thomas still wasn’t sure how to take any of Guy-Manuel’s actions he didn’t want to hope too much that they were becoming friends, but…  He couldn’t help but _wish_ that it was what was happening; more than anything he didn’t want this sudden openness between them to be nothing more than drunk or high concessions.  He wanted Guy-Manuel to be comfortable with him enough to share these things.  
         “So, ah--”  
         “I’m going back inside.”  Guy-Manuel cut him off, pushing off from the wall  “Nice talking to you, douchebag.”  
         With a frown, Thomas felt all the previous barriers be thrown back up between them, Guy-Manuel was just his secretive co-worker again.  He was all teeth and nails again as he strolled past Thomas and around the corner.  
         “Same to you, Chéri…”

\-------

         Waking up the next morning, Thomas rolled over on the couch with a groan.  His head was killing him, his stomach was…  Oh no.  
         Throwing himself to his feet, he stumbled across the mostly empty living room to the small bathroom in front of the staircase.  With shaking hands and a sweating forehead, he clung to the porcelain throne for dear life.  This was an all too incredibly familiar stance as he was pretty sure that he had also thrown up at some point in the night.  As his stomach convulsed all of his thoughts blurred into one scream of “stop!” as his body tried to resist the retroperistaltic pressure.  
         With a gasp, he remembered more of the night, he had been in there before, what had he been drinking?  Matt had handed him some bottle of clear liquid and…  He shuddered, but resisted the urge to vomit.  The same thing hadn’t happened _then_ though, he _did_ vomit, thankfully someone had picked him up before he could and held him over the kitchen sink with forceful arms.  He remembered cursing at someone because they had twisted his arm in the process and banged his head against the faucet.  
         Reaching up, he felt the space just above his left eye and winced as it screamed at him, that was definitely a bruise.  Perhaps more than a bruise, however as Thomas felt the crumbling of dried blood as it fell from his eyebrow.  As he thought harder and his stomach settled down, he realized that someone had yelled at the man that had picked him up--Bern had been the one to manhandle him.  They were yelling, calling him a slack-jawed, blazing idiot--Thomas remembered that Matt had been laying facedown on the landing of the stairs by then--he remembered…  
         “You’re okay?”  Thomas jumped at the voice in the bathroom’s doorway.  Guy-Manuel, a banana in his hand and eyes half-open in grogginess leaned on the door frame, a button-up shirt three sizes too large for him hanging off his body.  Thomas couldn’t help himself from thinking it was somehow cute and it was only intensified as Guy-Manuel brought the banana up to his lips and took a bite.  
         “I think so…”  Thomas responded in a grainy voice.  “Thanks for helping me to the couch last night.”  
         “You’re not gonna throw up again are you?”  Guy-Manuel asked through a mouth of chewed banana.  
         “I think I’m fine, but I need some water.”  he moaned, “What did Matt give me?”  
         As Guy-Manuel stepped into the bathroom, he fetched down a glass from the medicine cabinet, filling it with water, “Something Bernerd gave him, he was calling it _Neutralalkohol_.” he explained, tripping over the syllables of the foreign word as he handed the glass of water down to Thomas.  “I think it’s something like that American stuff, Everclear.  Mathieu loves it.”  Another bite from his quickly shortening banana.  
         “Eugh, he could just stick to absinthe.”  Thomas muttered, sipping the water.  
         “If he had given you absthine, with how you were last night, I think you would be in worse shape now.”  
         “Maybe.”  Thomas moaned, finishing his water.  “I need to get home.” he closed his eyes and set the cup aside.  “Do you work today?”  
         “In a couple hours, yes.”  
         “You haven’t had a day off in--”  
         “I know how long it’s been and it’s normal.”  
         “Em…”  Thomas cleared his throat and looked up to him, “How do you get to work?”  
         “I drive.”  
         “Can I, uh…  Can I hitch a ride with you to work and I can just catch the bus from there?”  Thomas questioned sheepishly.  
         Guy-Manuel rolled his eyes, “I might as well just drive you home.”  
         “You don’t have to--”  
         “Yeah, so it should say something when I _offer_ to do so, dumbass.” he snorted, gritting his teeth.  
         “Oh…  Well, uh…  Thank you?”  
         “Don’t thank me until I’ve actually gotten you home.”  He grunted, stepping away from the door, “I’m going to get dressed, be ready when I get back down.”  
         “O-Okay…”  Thomas peeped, feeling his face turn red as he got to his feet.

  
         The car ride with Guy-Manuel turned out to be significantly more awkward than expected, neither spoke and apparently the CD player and radio were both broken in his car.  At least the car was filled with the sounds of blowing air as the windows were down, considering the AC was likewise broken.  Other than that, the only words that were spoken were Thomas directing Guy-Manuel to the house he resided in.  
         “How quaint.”  Guy-Manuel commented as he pulled up to the curb of the small home.  
         “It’s home.” Thomas smiled to him stepping out of the car and stretching his long, gangly limbs.  Through the entirety of the car ride, he couldn’t help but think the whole vehicle had been scaled down specifically for the other man.  “Thanks for the ride, Chéri.”  Thomas grinned into the car, bending low to wave into the still open door at him.  
         “Don’t mention it.” the driver grumped.  “Oh, by the way, check your back pocket.”  
         “W-Why?”  Thomas tipped his head to the side, reaching into the designated location and feeling a slip of paper therein.  
         “It doesn’t matter just close the door, I gotta go home and get ready for work.” the defensive man spat violently.  Thomas, being all too keen to let Guy-Manuel go before he turned truly irascible, closed the door and stepped away.  
         As he pulled the slip of paper from his back pocket, he watched as his coworker sped away like a bat out of hell down the road.  Curious, he unfolded the piece in his hand and read what had been scrawled in elegant, flowing letters.  The script “Chéri 06-82-99-47-57” glared back at him from the paper with startling intensity, he felt his palms sweat, the butterflies in his stomach go a flapping and the blood all rush to his face.  With jerking steps, he made his way back into his house and straight into his bedroom.  His grandma said something to him, but he couldn’t quite make out what it had been.  It was only a phone number, and it probably meant nothing at that, but all the same, he collapsed onto his bed and buried his face joyfully into his pillow, squeezing the paper tightly in his hand.

 

 


	5. Summertime Clothes--Animal Collective

         As Thomas trotted into work, a bright smile on his face--and a bandaid over the cut in his eyebrow--he realized that the cause of his merriment was nowhere to be found.  Instead, he found his manager inputting information into the back dock’s computer.  With a hum, he passed the older man up and walked to see the schedule on the wall.  Guy-Manuel apparently had the next three days off…  
         “Why did you take away the third shift this week?”  Thomas questioned over his shoulder.  
         “I thought you’d be appreciative.”  Stephen explained.  “Since Guy-Man did so well at training you, this might be the norm for awhile.”  
         Thomas hummed again and noticed that he and Guy-Manuel now only worked alternating shifts…  If Thomas worked the evening shift for three days, he had three days off while his co-worker handled the evening shifts.  Sunday was the only day on the board where Guy-Manuel and himself worked at the same time and it was--coincidentally or not--the only day he got to work with the decidedly sullen man.  He pouted at the schedule as if it would help anything, but, he supposed it was possible Guy-Manuel had known about this.  It was all too well-timed for him to receive his phone number.  
          As he contemplated the timing, however, he was all too aware that if he hadn’t somehow made an impression on Guy-Manuel--Chéri--at that party, he would have no contact with him for the next six days.  Which, that only somehow made the surly man’s gesture of his phone number all the more meaningful to him.  Inside, he told himself that he was reading too much into it; Chéri, most likely, didn’t care that they were going to be apart for almost the whole week.  
         Then something else occurred to Thomas that made him curse the new schedule.  
          _I’m going to have just enough time to develop a normal sleep schedule and it’s going to get screwed up again._  He growled under his breath at himself.  
         “Are you upset with the schedule?”  
        Thomas jumped and spun around to see Stephen standing less than two feet away from him.  This was clearly an invasion of his personal space.  
         “W-Why does everyone do that to me?!”  Thomas screeched.  
         “You mean sneak up on you and start talking?”  Stephen smirked in a kindly manner.  
         “Y-yeah.”  
         “I’ve worked with Guy-Man for so long, I guess he’s rubbed off on me.”  The older man snorted and looked off towards the maze of boxes.  “As difficult as he is, I can’t say he’s a bad worker.”  
          _Coming from the man who’s tried to fire him from day one…_  
         “Well, I’m leaving in the next hour and I have a lot to do.”  Stephen stepped off and headed back for the computer, typing something in before pressing the escape button.  “I probably won’t say goodbye, so I’ll do it now; have a good shift, Thomas.”  And Stephen left through the large swinging doors, leaving Thomas alone for the next eight hours.

\-------

         After his third lonely shift came and went, he groaned, laying awake in bed.  Nestled between his chest and arms was his pillow that his chin rested upon.  In his hands, on the other side of the pillow, glowed the screen of his phone telling him it was two in the morning.  With another exhale that sounded more like a sigh than a groan, he reached out and turned off the blue light of his stereo system.  He could _try_ to sleep and receive little positive result for his effort, or he could check to see if Julian was awake again.  
          _Better not._  Thomas reminded himself, that man was downright evil when awoken.  Now grumbling at his ineffectual ideas, he scrolled through his phone numbers and landed on the newest addition therein.   _Really think he’s still awake?_  If anyone was it would be him…  
         “U awake?” Thomas sent to the new number, waiting without too much hope of reciprocation.  
         Surprisingly, however, there was a response less than three minutes later, “Who is this?”  
         “I didnt wake u did I?” he sent back, preferring not to reveal who he was just yet.  
         “No, I don’t sleep and you obviously knew that.  Who is this?”  
         “Thomas.”  
         “What do you want, Douchebag?”  Thomas frowned at the hostile message and almost reconsidered responding.  That was a pretty big almost though.  
         “I cant sleep an everyone else is.”  
         “The life of working third shift.”  Chéri amicably responded.  “You might as well not try to fix your sleep.  The schedule and all.”  
         “I saw.  I still want to sleep tho.”  
         “Sucks to be you.”  
         “Wat do u do?”  
         “Do I do for what?”  
         “Wen u cant sleep.”  
         “Rub one out.”  
         Thomas’s face flared with embarrassment, hiding it in his pillow despite no one being around to see him be so awkward.  
         “Make some music, smoke weed, Mathieu comes over a lot to see Bernerd so we play video games too.”  
         “Wait wat?”  
         “What what?”  
         “Do u live with Bern?”  
         “No shit, Sherlock.”  
         “Hows that?”  
         “You can imagine, I’m sure.”  
         “Fun?”  
         “It’s awful.  Are you going to leave me alone now?”  
         “I can if you want.”  
         Placing his phone aside, Thomas rolled to lay on his back, not expecting anything else for the rest of the night.  He stared at the ceiling for a solid ten minutes and felt sleep no closer to his possession.  He needed to do something and, as his co-worker had put it, rubbing one out did not sound particularly appealing that evening.  Too tired to do anything, not tired enough to sleep.  He knew this feeling well…  This feeling had never lead to good things in the past.  
          His bored inner monologue suddenly jammed as the sound of his ringer broke the room’s silence.  He jumped in bed and quickly fumbled for the phone, holding it to his ear.  
         “H-Hello?”  Thomas awkwardly greeted.  
         “Yo.”  Chéri’s voice came at him from the other end of the line.  
         “I th-thought you wanted me to leave you alone.”  
         “You don’t have to leave me alone if you don’t want to.” the other man answered.  
         “O-Oh…  Uh…  So…”  
         “What do you do when you can’t sleep?”  
         “I-I don’t really have this problem that often.”  Thomas was honest.  
         “Mn…  Want me to come get you?”  
         “What?”  
         “Do you want me to come get you or not?”  
         “Uh…”  Thomas fumbled with his words for a bit before blurting “Yes.”

\-------

         Driving around in Guy-Man’s car, sharing a blunt, the two cruised through the streets of their town with the windows open.  From the moment Thomas had entered the vehicle and they had finished saying their hellos neither had said a word.  All that had happened was Guy-Man had lit up both a cigarette and their weed, he passed the joint to Thomas as he burned through his cigarette.  At one point, they had traded, Thomas finishing the cigarette and flicking it out the window and Guy-Man finished the blunt, doing much the same.  
         Wordlessly, Thomas turned his gaze from out the window to the driver of the car.  His long, brown hair rippled in the gentle wind of outside, the gloss catching the passing orange light of streetlamps.  His stoic face was focused perfectly on the road, pupils nearly enveloping all of his intelligent blues.  There was no tension in his features, just calm acceptance of the world that was.  
          With his elbow resting on the ledge of the door, Thomas’s fingers raised unbidden to his own, plump lips.  He ran his index finger over his lower lip as his thumb rested casually at the corner of his mouth.  He wondered what the other man’s lips felt like; he wondered if Guy-Man ever had similar thoughts; he wondered a great many things that he was thankfully able to keep inside against his growing urge to let them spill from his mouth.  There was something lulling in their silence and he didn’t want to be the one to ruin it.

  
         As they settled without a word in a random neighborhood that overlooked some nearby municipality, Guy-Man let out a breath.  He blinked as he shifted his eyes from the scenery in front of him to Thomas.  The youth had long given up on staring at him and had resumed his peaceful observation of their surroundings.  Placidly, he noticed that the sky over the overlooked city below was beginning to lighten with impending sunrise.  
         “Get out.”  Guy-Man ordered, opening his door and stepping around to the front of the car.  
         “Okay.” Thomas agreed, following suit and closing his door behind him.  Seeing Chéri sitting on the bonnet of the car, his heels resting on it’s harried bumper, Thomas chose to do the same.  Where he couldn’t quite get his gangly legs to comfortably sit on the bumper of the car, he didn’t care as he stretched the long appendages out in front of him in the dirt.  “Is this normal for you?”  Thomas questioned.  
         “No.”  Guy-Man answered, “I don’t do things like this normally.”  
         “Then how’d you know this is a great place to watch the sunrise?”  
         “Oh…  I drive around a lot at night and smoke, yeah.”  
         “What did you think I meant?”  Thomas’s question floated on the sweet summer air as the infantile sunrise began to paint the sky with hues of blue and purple that faded to pink.  
         “See other people.”  
         “Oh.”  
         “Mathieu and Bernerd are the extent of my socialization.”  
         “That doesn’t sound so bad…”  Thomas supposed, but it was easy for him to tell Guy-Man’s feelings by his lack of a response.  “Ever bring those two here?”  
         “No.”  
         “Why?”  
         “I don’t want to.”  
         “So why me?”  
         “I thought, maybe, you’d like it.”  
         “It’s very pretty.”  Thomas commented appreciatively as the sun finally broke the surface of the Earth, the municipality below ablaze with morning’s fire.  “Thank you, Chéri.”  
         “No problem, Douchebag.”  
         “Wow…”  Thomas sighed, the suns rays catching the morning haze of the city and turning it to orange mist, the lights of cars gliding in and out of sight as normal people awoke and went to work.  
         “Makes up for never being able to see the sunset, right?”  
         “Yeah…”  Thomas’s mouth still hung open in awe at the beauty before him and he heard Guy-Man snigger beside him.  
         “Why do I get the feeling I’ve caught you looking at me like that?”  
         “Huh?”  Thomas closed his mouth and tipped his head to the side with curiosity.  
         “Nothing…”  Guy-Man’s lips curved a little to him, sliding off the hood of the car.  “Ready to sleep yet?”  
         “I think I could manage that.”  Thomas replied back with a toothy smile, stepping off to stand next to his budding friend.

  
         Rolling up to Thomas’s house, the skinny boy stepped out, the heavens above already turning a riveting blue of summer that everyone else was going to see.  As he had the last time he was in Guy-Man’s car, he bent low and poked his head into the cab again, this time to ask, “Do you drive around every night?”  
         “Yeah.”  The older man, his voice flat and tired, replied, a cigarette between his fingers.  “Same time tonight?” he offered, seeing the huge, charming grin that split Thomas’s face.  It was impossible for him to resist a smile back at a reaction like that.  
         “Sure!  Maybe a little earlier though.”  
         “Does one sound good to you?”  
         “Midnight?”  
         “Half-past.”  Guy-Man negotiated.  
         “Sounds good!”  
         The older man snorted, closing his eyes as he smirked to himself, “Sounds like a date.” he said.  
         “W-What?!”  
         He laughed.  
         “Uh-Uh, I…”  Thomas swallowed, looking away from Guy-Man as his face turned bright red.  “I…  Y-Yeah?”  
         “See you after work, Douchebag.”  
         “S-S-See you, Chéri…”  Thomas muttered, stepping back to close the door.  He watched until the car had disappeared from vision and grinned again before shuffling inside to get some rest.

\-------

         When seven swift raps came to Thomas’s door, he knew his pleasant sleep was over.  Moaning, he rolled over onto his back and stared at the ceiling.  He could make them believe he was slow to awaken that day.  The raps came again and he moaned in tandem, flicking his eyes to the clock to see that it read he had slept _well_ past noon.  
         For a third time, the knocks came.  
         He scoffed, “ _What_?!”  
         Hearing the jingle-jangle of keys against each other, he didn’t even need to hear the voice to know who it was “Get up, Thomas!"  
          _Oh no._  Thomas internally grumbled.  Why did his grandmother even let him in?  Didn’t she know he was still asleep?  “I’ll be up in a minute.”  
         “That minute starts now because here I come.”  
         Pulling his pillow over his face, Thomas clutched to it as his door busted open.  He grunted and clutched harder as he felt the invader grab the pillowcase, “Juuules!” he whined, his fingers digging into the soft warmth over his face.  
         “You can’t sleep aaaall day!”  Julian warbled, tearing the comforting object away from his friend.  Thomas just sighed and squinted his eyes against the light that made it past the slats of his blinds.  Julian was certainly in fine form that day, his long hair in stylish disarray.  “C’mon, we haven’t hung out in almost two weeks.”  
         “Because I work at night, Julian.”  Thomas muttered, sitting up in bed.  “You sun people sleep while I do my job.”  
         “You haven’t been out of school for a month yet, Thomas, stop acting like a grumpy, old man.”  he chortled merrily, “I have a job _and_ go to school, after all!”  
         “Yeah, but you still only work part-time right now.”  Thomas reminded him, “And you don’t even work half as much during the school year.”  He tried not to lecture the younger man, he was only a year behind him, after all, but somehow he felt he was justified.  Even if Julian had had a job for a significantly longer time than him.  
         “Thomas, we’re not debating this, you’re going away to university soon and I’m staying here.  Just get up and hang out with me.”  
         Lifting a hand to his eyes, Thomas rubbed the sleep from them and hummed, “You have a point.”  Throwing himself from bed and connecting with the carpet, Julian chuckled at him, crossing his arms over his chest as he took up a spot in Thomas’s desk chair.  However, this was not before he plucked the stereo controller from his nightstand and pressed the on button.  
         “Dance for me, fool!”  Julian laughed as his half-naked best friend jumped at the suddenly blaring hip-hop music.  
         “My _grandma_ is out in the kitchen!”  Thomas yelled as the music segued into some nasty imagery, “Turn it down!”  
         “Yeeg."  Julian quickly dialed back the volume and was rewarded with Thomas’s quirky dancing.  “Why don’t we ever go to clubs, dude?” he laughed.  “I wanna see you get freaky on the dancefloor.”  
         “Because you’re seventeen.”  Thomas reminded with a giggle and wrenching open his chest of drawers. “And me telling people I’m your step-dad doesn’t seem to be high on your coolness list.”  He could go to clubs with Chéri though…  As his freckled back was still turned to his friend, he shared a private smile with the wall whilst he grabbed the t-shirt he selected for that day.  
         “I don’t have too much longer.”  Julian stood up from the desk chair and wandered over to the stereo, poking a finger over Thomas’s ipod and sliding his finger around the unlock pattern; Thomas tried hard to always change his lock frequently to keep Julian out of his things, but he always seemed to find a way inside.  For example, Thomas’s door was actually locked that day.  For example, Julian hadn’t known him two weeks before he seemed to know everything about Thomas.  Others might call it creepy, but Julian was good-natured and sincere, so Thomas didn’t care.  “August.” he reminded.  With a contemplative expression, he reached out to Thomas’s bass guitar that leaned safely in the crook of where his desk met his entertainment stand.  He plucked up the instrument and held it in his arms, plucking a few out-of-tune notes up and down a scale.  
         He remembered when they had first met, they had had delusions of starting a band together.  Thomas played bass, he played piano--so a keyboard could be right in there--and he had a remarkable sense of rhythm and seemed to know his way around a drum machine.  He himself, well, he could sing and he could play guitar and almost everything else Thomas could do.  The main nail in the coffin for that, idea, however, was that Thomas trended towards a sound he wasn’t overly fond of.  The older man seemed stuck in the past to him, preferring funk and disco and retro hip-hop  over more contemporary picks.  Not that Julian himself couldn’t go for some Velvet Underground himself, or other “old” bands, but…  He sighed to himself, it was rude of him to think the things he did about Thomas’s musical tastes--sometimes though, he felt it had something to do with his old man.  
         When he next peered over his shoulder to Thomas--strumming the bassline to a Queens of the Stone Age song--the boy had already changed out of his boxers into a new pair and a pair of boot-cut jeans.  As if his legs didn’t already look long enough normally, the added lines of the jeans made him look like he had slender trees attached to his lower half.  Julian couldn’t help but chuckle internally, his energetic, stuttering friend had certainly drawn a mismatched lot in his genetics that lead to awkwardity everywhere.  Giraffe legs and jutting bones along with a mouth that never closed was the perfect formula in Julian’s mind for a dude that had very little luck in the getting laid area.  
         “What’re you staring at, dude?”  Thomas questioned, revealing an old Funkadelic t-shirt that must’ve belonged to his father by the well-worn design.  
         “Nothin’.”  Julian shrugged, flitting his eyes from Thomas’s chest up to his face.  He plucked a few more notes and Thomas reached out for his baby with a tired expression.  The younger man chuckled and handed it off to him, watching as Thomas’s clever fingers better tuned it.  “When was the last time you played?”  
         “I don’t know.” The man shrugged, rolling his fingers over the strings, calluses long disappeared from their tips.  “About a year, maybe.”  Catching the frown on Julian’s face, Thomas set the instrument gently down, “But I might start again soon.  I had some inspiration recently.” A real smile pulled his lips open and Julian’s expression became curious.  
         “Oh, really?”  
         “Yeah.”  Thomas chuckled, “I went to a party last Saturday.”  
         “All it took was a party?  Shoot, why didn’t I--”  
         “No-no,” Thomas chuckled, “it wasn’t the party itself, just who was there.” he explained and felt his face blush as a knowing smirk came over his younger friend’s attractive face.  
         “I’m not going to get mad that you didn’t invite me because I sense a story.”  At the dark note to Julian’s voice, Thomas was very happy that the developing scar in his eyebrow was largely hidden by his hair that badly needed a cut.  He didn’t need to know about that.  
         “W-Well,” Thomas reached up to rub the back of his neck, “remember that guy I work with?” he started as Julian resituated himself comfortably in Thomas’s rolling chair.  
         “The asshat?” Julian offered with a raised eyebrow.  
         “Y-Yeah…  Well, he’s uh, he was there--at the party, I mean--a-and turns out he’s a DJ!”  
         Julian rolled his eyes then, a smile coming to his face, “Right, is that why you call him Chéri?”  
         “No!”  Thomas huffed, “That was before I knew…  B-But he spun some wicked-sick beats at the party--”  
         “Thomas, you realize that nobody talks that way anymore, right?”  Julian teased with a wide smile.  
         “Sh-Shut up!” he was quickly growing more and more flustered and he couldn’t quite understand why, only that it was there as he spoke more and more animately about the experience.  “N-Nobody really seemed to appreciate what he was doing though--a-and I really loved it!  He let me spin with him for a bit and-and-and, I really, _really_ want to--”  
         “Since when are you even _friends_ with this guy?” Julian cut in, “He treats you like shit, Thomas.”  
         “We--”  
         “Just because you found one thing you share in common with him doesn’t mean you’re supposed to be friends.”  
         “I-I-I w-was jus-just th-th-th--”  
         “Thinking _what_?”  
         His shoulders deflating, Thomas wrapped his arms around himself, “W-Well, af-after that night he gave me his number and…”  
         “So?  He’s been nothing but a jerk.”  The younger man’s brow wrinkled as his voice was painted with disdain.  “You don’t need negative people like that in your life.”  
         Thomas opened his mouth to voice his opinion, but as normal, Julian beat him to the punch as his mouth stumbled over syllables.  
         “You have plenty of shit already.”  
         “I just think maybe…  Maybe there’s--there’s…”  Thomas paused to think for a second, Julian opening his mouth to cut in again, but he, beating _him_ to it for once, “I think there’s more to him than what he says or how he acts.  Like, maybe--”  
         “You like him, don’t you?”  Julian guessed and Thomas froze for a second, his cheeks heating up.  “That’s it, isn’t it?” the man in the chair folded his hands together in his lap, his lips pressing into a fine line.  
         “I…”  Thomas didn’t want to look at Julian, but he didn’t want to seem as though he was ashamed of himself--looking to the floor wasn’t an option--so there was nowhere for him to look.  He reached out his hand and fidgeted with a pencil sitting on his desk; he would’ve stared out the window, but he had forgotten that his blinds were still closed.  
         “Thomas, I don’t care that you’re talking about a man.”  The younger man breathed, “That’s the last thing that I care about here, so you can relax…”  
         The whippet thin man still couldn’t stand to look at him as he sighed, “Oh.”  Nonetheless, tension visibly flowed out of his body, his shoulders relaxed, he picked up the pencil and began to drag it slowly over a blank scrap of paper.  
         “What…  What I do care about, and--again, sorry for the chick moment here--what I _do_ care about is that I don’t want to see you chasing after someone who is so…  So _bad_ for you.”  
         “You don’t even know him.”  Thomas muttered petulantly, knowing he sounded like a child.  Julian, for all of his antics and personality was one of the last people Thomas would call irresponsible.  Maybe he was only still _here_ because of Julian’s advice.  He hadn’t really considered it too hard before.  
         “Do you?”  Julian posed, “ _Really_?”  
         “I want to get to know him…”  Thomas admitted, “Ev-Even if…  Even if nothing can-can happen between us, just friends would be fine.”  The squiggles he was making on the paper were calming and he was glad Julian was doing nothing to thwart his soothing fidget.  He had always been so accepting and understanding of them--of him.  
         “Why?  Because he likes the same music you do?”  Julian supposed he understood given that most of Thomas’s pool of friends felt much the same as he did on the man’s music selection.  At the same time, he felt that petty reasons like that very rarely built strong, lasting friendships.  Perhaps he was being a little hypocritical, however, given his own age.  
         “I feel like we come from the same place.”  Thomas murmured, not knowing why he felt so.  “Maybe we’re both a little lost.  We just handle it differently.”  
         Julian hummed with thought, “Okay, I’ll humor you…  What makes you say that?”  While Thomas was prone to looking _too_ deeply into things, Julian knew better than to discount his deductions.  Thomas had not graduated at the top of his class for nothing--amid all the stuttering and teenage disorientation, it was easy for Julian to lose track of the fact that his friend was something of a genius.  
         Thomas shrugged, “The way his friends talk about him, the way he talks about the people he calls his friends.  His views on the world…  He almost feels crushed.”  
         “Is this pity?”  Julian posed and then, he felt his heart sink as a new idea occurred to him, “Or do you feel…?”  
         Thomas shook his head, “I just think that he’s defensive and he’s rude and-and he’s crude for the same reasons that I screen my phone calls, or make up reasons to stay home.” the man sucked his tongue, finally gathering some semblance of courage to look to his friend.  
         “You know I’m going to have to meet this fucker, right?”  Julian told him, allowing a small smile.  
         “Oh, please, I don’t need you to protect me.” Thomas looked away from him again, this time in irritation.  
         “I know you don’t need that.”  The expression on Julian’s face suggested that the rest of that statement was likely along the lines of “not anymore”.  “But if this little shit’s important to you, for _whatever_ reason, I have to know him.”  
         “Yeah, but I’d think it’s best to hold off on that for now…  You have me thinking.”  
         “That’s what I’m here for, bro.”  
         “I get the feeling that if I try to introduce you to him now, the first words out of your mouth after meeting him are going to be similar to ‘his ass is grass’.”  
         “Sounds like we got a winner for your heart.”  Julian joked, laughing as Thomas’s face screwed up in embarrassment.  
         “Stop it.” Thomas put the pencil down and reached out to give Julian a casual smack across the top of his head.  
         Standing up and pulling out a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket, Julian slipped one between his lips, “Stock up on condoms and lube man.  Or you’re gonna have one sore butt!”  He fled the room as he heard his friend screech and give chase after him.

\-------

         The rest of the day with Julian had been what it normally was.  They laughed and picked on each other, smoked too many cigarettes and jabbered about going into the city, but never did.  They imagined the shit they could wreck up together and the graffiti they would draw if they had any skills.  
         “You’d probably just spray-paint ‘I’m sorry’ everywhere.” Julian had teased.  
         “You’d just label everything you like with ‘rad’ though!” Thomas jibed right back.  
         As sunset came upon them, they sat upon the stoop of Thomas’s home, finishing their packs of cigarettes as the sky slowly darkened.  
         “I have a kind of date with him tonight.”  Thomas explained.  
         “Really?”  Though Julian’s tone was one of disinterest, Thomas knew better.  
         “We went out last night…  Didn’t do a whole lot besides smoke a blunt and watch the sunrise.”  
         “Uegh.”  Julian commented, “How disgusting.”  
         “I don’t know if that’s what he has in mind tonight though.  Since he’s coming to get me a lot earlier.”  
         “Why not just try sleeping?”  The younger man tipped his sunglasses to sit on top of his head as the last vestiges of the sun’s light left the world around them.  
         “Because neither of us can.  Third shift’s screwed us up.”  
         “At least you’ve found something to do with your evenings.”  
         “Yeah.”  Thomas grinned, flicking the butt of his cigarette away with Julian’s.

\-------

         Checking his phone, Thomas eagerly stepped outside to his porch.  Julian had left some time ago, leaving him time to shower and decide on new clothes.  And by new, he meant new to the day, not necessarily new to the world.  The shirt was a nice shade of avocado, he’d picked it up at a thrift store for two dollars not long ago and he loved the thing to death.  Not only did he like the color, but he thought it made him look dapper, combined with his jeans and the moderately heeled boots he was wearing, he would describe himself as “snazzy”.  Had Julian seen him, however, he would’ve said “You’ll poke someone’s eye out with that collar”.  It was always a hard decision in his head, however, of whether or not to tuck his shirt in.  As he was trying to look nice, he originally went for the tucked.  Though as he realized his high-waisted jeans made him look like a _total dork_ he untucked it to hide his pants’ waistband.  
         As he saw a pair of old headlights dawn over the hill of his street, he felt his excitement increase.  So much excitement was contained that as the car rolled to a stop at his lawn, he jumped in his step a little as he approached the car.  He was careful, however, to control the grin on his face, he didn’t want to seem too eager, lest he frighten his new friend off.  With careful, calculated movements, he opened the door and settled himself inside, he managed a casual “Hey!”, but that was where any idea of being opaque died.  
         Guy-Man, his hand resting on the shift of his car, had his hair tied up messily, a black polo stretched over his often well-hidden, broad chest.  He was giving Thomas a peculiar expression, a white stick poking from his mouth that was, for once, not either a joint or a cigarette.  Taking his hand from the shift and pulling the red sucker out of his mouth, Guy-Man asked,  “What the fuck are you wearing, Douchebag?”  
         “Th-This is my favorite shit!”  Thomas explained, feeling sweat bead at his hairline as a hysterically nervous smile played over his features.  
         “From _when_?  The eighties?”  
         “W-Well, you’re not exactly trend-forward yourself!”  Thomas excused, looking at the dated, threadbare shirt and khaki cargo-shorts.  
         “Retro is in right now.” Guy-Man excused as Thomas closed his door.  
         “Aren’t I retro?”  Thomas enquired.  
         “Nah, you’re vintage.”  
         “I’m pretty sure this is from the nineties…”  Thomas mumbled, wishing for a second that clothes were like books and came with a “publishing” date.  “Or at least early 2000s…  Which would make me more up-to-date than you!”  
         “I still look less ridiculous than you.” he began to drive and Thomas pulled his seatbelt on, watching as Guy-Man slipped the sucker back into his mouth.  
         “Only a true nineties kid--”  
         “You have just given me full rights to punch the shit out of you at the next stoplight.”  
         “Please don’t…”  
         “Why?  Afraid you’ll get beat up by a pipsqueak like me?”  Guy-Man smirked.  
         “B-Because I d-don’t want to hav-have to break your face?”  
         The older man laughed…  He actually _laughed_.  “Are you sure about that, Douchebag?”  
          “Hit me and see what happens.”  Thomas pushed, not being able to help his wide smile at the mirthful, unfamiliar noise that had poured from the ordinarily reserved and stoic man’s mouth.  
         When they rolled to a stop at a red traffic light, Thomas braced himself for impact.  When it never came, he sniggered, “Too afraid of these muscles?” he poked his skinny, insubstantial arm.  
         “Nah, you’re just not worth my time.”  
         “Oh…”  
         “Eh…”  
         A long, awkward silence followed as they drove towards the city together.  They passed the desolate, suburban streets of people already in bed.  It really was boring growing up in a “small town”, Thomas wondered how different his life could’ve been had he grown up in a more urban setting.  He supposed not much different, but maybe he would’ve at least been a bit less anxious around people?  
         “Hey…” Thomas slipped into the silence, watching as the city streets passed by. “Do you want to go for a walk?”  
         “Sure, why not?”  As Guy-Man pulled them over to the side of the road, he slowly backed up until he felt his bumper gently nudge the car behind him before pulling forward in his spot.  There might have been only a few centimeters between him and the other car in front, but he could manage.  
         “Wow, you’re great at parallel parking…”  
         “I don’t think you realize just how many of the dents in my car were caused by me and not other drivers.”  Guy-Man sniggered.  “I’m down here a lot, I have a lot of practice.”  
         Getting out of the car and both making sure their respective sides were locked, they began to walk down the sidewalk together.  Whilst Guy-Man lit up a cigarette, Thomas gaped at all the buildings.  He never went downtown all that much so it was still something of a special thing for him.  As the tall boy noticed Guy-Man observing him from out of the corner of his eye, however, he closed his mouth and shoved his hands into his pocket.  
          _Be cool…_  He told himself.  Giving the other man a sheepish smile, he cleared his voice and looked away as that same man shook his head and turned his face up towards the sky.  “So….  Uh….”  
         “Did you want to actually go anywhere in particular?”  
         “N-No…  I don’t come down here that much.  It’s just amusing for me to see any of it.”  
         “If that’s the case…”  Guy-Man suddenly cut across the street from him, Thomas barely holding in a screech as a wall of the meager, midnight traffic quickly followed him.  With a relieved sigh, Thomas saw his friend on the opposite sidewalk, waving his arm for him to come on over.  Pouting his lips a little, Thomas jogged down to the traffic light and crossed at the crosswalk.  “Don’t you _ever_ do anything you’re not supposed to?” Guy-Man asked as Thomas came to stand safely next to him.  
         “I just don’t fancy getting hit by a car.” Thomas explained, reaching one hand up to rub the back of his neck.  
         The shorter man shrugged, “C’mon.” grabbing ahold of the cuff of Thomas’s shirt to tug him along.  At first, Thomas felt the need to jerk his hand back, he didn’t need Guy-Man leading him, but he decided against it as he realized that this was the first time Guy-Man had opted to touch him in a way that was not purely utilitarian.   _Surely_ , for more reasons than one, Chéri was aware that Thomas would follow him even if he didn’t have a hold on such a thin strip of fabric.  
         “W-Where are we going?”  Thomas questioned, stretching out a timid finger to brush his friend’s warm hand.  
         “Ever seen the Eiffel tower at night?” Chéri asked, not looking back to him.  
         “Not up close…”  Thomas nervously answered, “But, uh… Aren’t we pretty far from it?”  
         “You said you wanted to go for a walk, Douchebag.”  He turned back to Thomas, a smirk on his lips as he gave the curious finger a light touch back.  It stood to say, that Thomas wasn’t overly fond of the name Chéri had picked to call him, in spite of the coyly returned touch, he still found himself tugging his hand back away from the other man.  He knew he was probably imagining things, but for a second, he thought he saw his face fall.  “What?”  He asked irritably as they both simultaneously positioned their hands inside their jeans’ pockets.  
         “W-Well…  Uh…”  Thomas looked away to his shoes on the pavement, he was silent for a few moments, neither man moving.  He expected some sort of urge from Guy-Man to spit his words out, but it never came.  When he finally chose to look back up, Guy-Man was still waiting, his eyes trained patiently on him.  “I know it was-was… Uehm….  Only a joke, what you said this morning--erm, yesterday--but, I uh…”  Again his hand left its comfortable perch to stroke the base of his neck.  He swallowed his nervousness, seeing no change in Guy-Man’s expression, still the picture of steady calculation.  “I don’t know what I w-wanted to say.  So, never mind.”  Thomas looked back to the ground and started walking in the direction the two were originally heading in, finding the shorter man coming to walk in step with him.  
         “No, not never mind.  You know what you wanted to say, you just don’t know what my reaction will be.”  The older man knowingly asserted.  “This is about the date comment, right?”  
         “I-I guess?”  Thomas couldn’t bare to look at him.  
         “Look, if it makes you more comfortable, this isn’t a date and I was joking.”  
         “Oh…”  Thomas sighed, _Great._  
         “As you grow up, queer people are going to be all over the place; we’re just something you’re going to have to get used to.” He stated with a hint of distaste in his tone.  "And we make the same, empty jokes you guys do."  
         “Wait,” Thomas stopped, Guy-Man following suit.  “what?”  
         Likewise, the older man looked confused back at him, “You’re uncomfortable…  Because I said it was a date and you like chicks, right?”  It was the most self-conscious Thomas had ever heard him be.  Usually he seemed the picture of self-absorbed confidence, in that moment, however, it was gone, replaced by what most people his age felt about most everything--unsure.  
         “N-No…  I…  I _think_ I like guys too, or-or at-at least you…”  Oh, he felt so stupid, his face heating up and needing to look anywhere other than directly at him.  “I was just thinking, though…  Th-That if this _was_ a, uhm, a date, th-th-that--that maybe, y-you co--”  
         “Take a deep breath.”  Guy-Man suddenly ordered.  
         “What?”  Thomas, despite his embarrassment, snapped his eyes to him.  
         “Just do it.”  
         Slowly inhaling a deep, long breath, Thomas waited until Guy-Man said, “Now let it out.” before exhaling at an equally leisurely pace.  
         “Now, _slow down_.  What are you _trying_ to say?”  
         Thomas was careful to not let his words vomit out of his mouth way that they normally did, though, if he could get through this without stuttering, it would still be a miracle.  “If this _is_ a date,” he began slowly, “I was wondering if you could stop calling me a douchebag.”  
         “That’s all?”  Chéri’s head tipped slightly to the left.  
         “Y-Yeah…”  He watched as his conversant raised his arms from his pockets and folded them over his chest.  The square-jaw of his friend seemed tensely set as he also sucked on his tongue, his eyebrows knitting together in thought.  In those moments, Thomas wondered exactly what it was he was debating as his eyes flicked up to the light polluted sky.  Not a single star shone through the din of man-made light--he realized as he followed Chéri's gaze--and Thomas was actually grateful that he could at least see some of them back where he lived.    
         “Okay.” Guy-Man enunciated, dropping his arms back to his pockets and eyes to Thomas.  “Do you still want to walk around with me, Thomas?”  
         Rather than anything coherent coming out of his mouth, there followed a spew of stutters.  As if Chéri's use of his name didn't make him blush enough, his gawky, inarticulate voice wasn't helping.  When he gave up and frowned hopelessly at the air, he caught the wide smile on his counterpart's face.  His heart raced and he just nodded his head, knowing nothing intelligent was going to come out when faced with such an uncommon gift.  
         "C'mon on, then." Guy-Man motioned with his hand, "If we don't dawdle we can get there by two."  As he began walking, Thomas matched his pace to stride next to him.

  
         "You're not 'Douchebag' because I don't like you.  Quite the opposite." Guy-Man explained gently after ten blocks of silent enjoyment of the warm, city air.  
         "Do you get off on insults or something?" Thomas half-humorously posed, not fully understanding.  Usually the insults meant nothing _after_ being friends was a thing.  
         "I don't do this often." The shorter one stated.  "Or ever."  
         "Well, rarely are people as stupid as me and put up with being called names..."  
         "I know." He then huffed, "You're not stupid though."  
         "How would you know?" Thomas smirked. "Being smart is not necessary to be competent at a job."  
         "Because I've met very few stupid people who brush off my...  Social ineptness and deal back mature responses."  Guy-Man sighed, "Moreover...  I've gathered that you aren't simple."  There was a long pause where Thomas wasn't sure how to respond during.  The older man groaned and muttered something Thomas couldn't make out under his breath before following up with "You're a quality human being."  
         "Whoa, I'm quality." Thomas chuckled, "I need, like, a seal or something on my forehead!"  
         "Shut up." Guy-Man gave him a shove with his shoulder, his arms tightly crossed over his chest and eyes downcast.  
         "I mean, uh...  Th-Thank you.  I'd, uh, I mean, I'd really _like_ to say something of that effect back...  But I don't really know anything about you.  Oth-Other than you're definitely not a bad person."  
         Guy-Man sighed and Thomas scrambled to say something that _didn't_ make him sound like an asshole.  
         "No--d-don't be upset!  I meant that I really like y-y-you!  You're really int-interesting!" Oh, this was not going well. "You-you just really don't talk t-to me!  And when you do, you just seem always mad!"  Well, fuck. "And why can't I just ever fucking say the right thing?!" Angrily, Thomas reached up into his bushy hair and pulled at its roots.  
         "Hey..." Guy-Man's calm voice cut into the cacophony of Thomas's racing, chaotic thoughts.  
         Helplessly, Thomas turned to face him, frustration warring with confusion on his face.  He breathed out a bit as Chéri reached up to his arms and tugged them down from his hair.  The shorter man fixed them carefully at his sides and spoke, "You'll go bald if you keep doing that."  
         "Hah..." Thomas licked his dry lips, maintaining eye-contact with him and for once not feeling awkward, rather, he felt soothed.  
         "You're not offending me." Guy-Manuel assured, sliding his hands off the frail-seeming arms before him. "So, stop trippin' and chill out.  You're the most considerate fuck I've met in a long time.  It's...  Amazing to me that you're giving me the time of day."  Guy-Man gave a half-hearted, self-deprecating chuckle, "This, uh," he took a step away from Thomas, as if suddenly realizing their intimate proximity "I'm very bad at talking to new people.  It's always been easier to push people away than let them in." Seeing Thomas nod in agreement, Guy-Man took in a deep breath that raised his shoulders and made them fall when he let it out.  "I don't mean to be, well, mean...  It's just easier for me to say that I don't like people than for me to admit..." He growled under his breath.  "Do you even want to see the Eiffel Tower tonight?"  
         "We can see it another night." Thomas suggested.  
         "Okay, good...  Because I'd rather just sit somewhere--or just walk--and talk to you for awhile."  
         "I'm not opposed to that at all." Thomas responded with a good-natured smile.  Guy-Man returning that smile, they headed back in the direction they originally came from.  They meandered here and wandered there.  
         “What do you suppose they’re doing up there?”  Thomas asked, looking up to the one lone light that was on in an otherwise dark office building.  
         “Either being a slave to their job or having an affair.”  
         “Doing their job pantsless because no one’s there.”  
         “Photocopying their ass.”  
         “Does anybody even still do that?”  
         “Fine, photocopying their dick or pussy.”  
         “Plot twist, they’re just making macaroni art.” Thomas chuckled.  
         “Dear Boss, fuck you, I quit.  Hang that shit up on the refrigerator."  
         They both laughed and continued walking, the traffic becoming sparser and sparser as the evening went on towards morning.

  
         As Thomas began to notice the windows of flats go from their dark vacancy to the groggy morning light of wakefulness, further easy conversation flowed between them.  In the wee hours of the morning, they found out they had extremely similar tastes in music and, ah, films--especially art films--were the shit.  
         "So wonderfully opaque that everyone leaves the theatre thinking 'what the fuck did I just see'!" Thomas supplemented with a laugh.  
         "Or so fucking transparent that you roll your eyes wherever a central theme is touched upon." Guy-Man sniggered.  
         "The kind where you can say 'at least the costumes were great'."  
         "As they stare contemplatively out the window for three minutes too long."  
         “The gruesome ones!  ‘It’s a metaphor for how badly our culture has been raped’!”  
         “The fuckin’ weird ones where everyone is naked eighty percent of the time and _screaming_ for no reason.”  
         “Art!”  Thomas threw his arms up in the air, relishing the laughter Chéri granted him.  
         “Ah, David Lynch.”  Guy-Man sighed “dreamily”.  
         “Ever watched _Lost Highway_ fucked up?”  
         “Only, like, fifty times.”  
         “We should _do_ that.”  
         “Ach, you sound like a sixteen-year-old, ‘let’s get a band together; let’s _do_ that’!”  
         “Haha.”  Thomas nudged him playfully, “I’ve already tried that.”  
         “Oh, really?”  
         “Yeah, didn’t go well…”  Thomas rolled his eyes, “My buddies,” he stopped, wondering if Guy-Man really wanted to hear about this or not.  
         “Your buddies what?”  
         “Oh, well, two of my friends, Julian and this other guy I really don’t talk to much anymore, they never got along.  Julian, if you ever talk to him, will always say we never did anything because of ‘artistic differences’, really the reason was he hated the other guy’s guts.”  
         “And, who was this ‘other guy’?”  
         “I don’t like talking about him.”  Thomas muttered, “He was just some guy who said he was my friend, but when shit got real, he bailed on me.”  he sighed, “I can’t hate him though, he was different than me and that was okay, I shouldn’t have expected him to understand.”  
         Guy-Man nodded, “Sounds like my parents.”  
         “Oh, right, I meant to ask, how long you lived out of home?”  
         “None of your business.” And, just like that, Thomas felt all the warmth fade from their relationship again.  He flinched back, giving the older man his personal bubble again and put his hands into his pockets.  
         “I-I can see, it’s-it’s a touchy subject with you, s-so, okay.”  
         “Want to start back for the car?”  Guy-Man tersely offered.  
         “S-Sure…”  Watching the suddenly irritated man light up a cigarette, Thomas frowned deeply, following after him as his pace quickened towards the car.

  
         “I didn’t mean to upset you…”  Thomas murmured in the car, his head leaning against the window.  
         “Mn.”  The cigarette burned bright orange as Guy-Man took a sharp inhale and let the smoke drift out his as they sat at the curb.  
         “Okay…”  His stomach grumbled then, “Shit, I’m hungry.”  
         “Look in the glove box.”  Guy-Man ordered and Thomas couldn’t help but smile, of _course_ he kept food in his car.  
         As Thomas readily opened the box between his knees, Guy-Man turned on the car and pulled away from the curb.  
         “Is…  Dude, is that that a sandwich?”  Thomas asked, pulling out a plastic-wrapped object.  
         “I was wondering where that was.”  the older man said with a bit more enthusiasm in his voice.  He snatched the sandwich from Thomas’s hand and unwrapped it, cramming one end into his mouth.  As Thomas watched in wide-eyed amusement of the sandwich disappearing in as little as three bites, he laughed.  “What?!”  Guy-Man questioned past the mass of food in his mouth.  “I’m hungry too!”  
         “N-Nothing, it’s just…”  Thomas held his hand over his mouth to hide his smile and maybe muffle the words in some futile hope Chéri would not hear him, “You’re kind of cute.”  
         “What?”  A pink tint came to the older man’s face and he looked back to the road, “Whatever.”  Thomas chuckled, pulling a bag of rye chips out of the glove box and opening it.  “You’re cute too…”  
         “Eh-ehm…”  Thomas concentrated on eating the savory brown chips then, well-aware that Guy-Man was likewise sniggering as he had been.  “Th-Thank you, Chéri.”  
         “Oh god…”  
         “What?”  
         “Uh…  Nothing.”  
         “No, what?”  Nibbling on one chip, Thomas worked up his courage to look back at him.  
         “Uhm, call me that again.”  
         “Chéri?”  Thomas watched his friend grin as it took him awhile to realize that maybe that nickname had a bit more meaning now.  “Oh.” his face turned as pink as his friend’s.  
         As another night came to a close under a hot morning sky, Thomas realized that he didn’t want to leave.  He wanted to sleep, sure, but he wanted Chéri to come with him.  They didn’t have to do anything, they could just sleep…  Thomas wondered what he was like when he was asleep, all the tension melted off his face.  
         “Hey, before you go, I can’t go out tonight.  I have something I have to actually do before I go to work on Sunday.”  Guy-Man informed him as Thomas pulled on the lever to exit the car.  “So, I’ll be trying to sleep instead.”  
         “I’ll find some way to entertain myself.”  Thomas chuckled.  
         “Yeah, but, uhm,” The younger man watched as his friend subsequently pursed and unpursed his lips, his eyebrows pulling downward in thought.  
          “Is something wrong?”  
         “No, but…”  Guy-Man grunted and put the car in park, walking around to Thomas’s side of the car.  
         Confused, Thomas opened his door the rest of the way and stood up to his full height.  The shorter man stood on the curb of the sidewalk, looking up to him at first and then back down to his shoes, then back up.  It didn’t take Thomas long to realize what was about to happen and his heart hammered in his chest.  At least he wasn’t unexperienced in _this_ particular activity.  
         Leaning down, Thomas pressed their lips together in a sweet, chaste kiss, “Is that what you wanted?”  
         “No, not really…”  Guy-Man explained, Thomas bolting to stand upright again with his face beet red and stuttering out his apologies.  “Because, _this_ is more what I wanted to do.”  Grabbing ahold of Thomas’s shoulders, he pulled him back down, giving him a significantly firmer kiss.  He heard Thomas breath out and felt him awkwardly put his hands on his waist, he taking that as a cue to slide his hands up into his hair.  
         They continued to kiss until Thomas made a move to open his mouth and run his tongue tantalizingly along the part in Guy-Man’s lips.  The shorter man broke their contact, aware of the tiny whine that escaped Thomas.  He smirked up at him, “This is only our first date.” he sniggered.  
         Thomas light-heartedly chuckled, smiling down at him as he was red in the face, “Yeah.”  
         “Go to bed, Douchebag.”  Guy-Manuel stepped away from him with a smile.  
         “Okay.” the younger man grinned.  
         “I’ll see you on Sunday!”  
         “Yeah, you too.”  Thomas answered with a wistful sigh as his friend drove away.  He needed to tell Julian about this as soon as he could, but first, he needed to collapse for a little sleep.

 


	6. Something About Us--Daft Punk

         “Can I come up there?”  Thomas asked on Sunday, craning his neck back to look up at Guy-Man on his stack of boxes.  
         “No.” his friend responded, taking his cigarette from his mouth.  
         “I could make it worth your while.” he informed him with a smirk, leaning on the pallet of goods.  
         “I’m going to knock you right off if you come up here, Douchebag, so I would suggest that you just stay down there.”  
         “Don’t like being shorter than me?” he giggled, really, he wasn’t _that_ much taller than Guy-Man.  
         “How about you stop socializing and do your job?” Guy-Man hissed, finishing his cigarette as Thomas frowned up at him.  
         “Did something happen earlier today?”  
         “None of your business.” The older man grunted, dropping off his perch and landing next to Thomas.  
         “O-Okay…”  While Thomas hadn’t been expecting any kind of tenderness from Guy-Man at work, he also hadn’t expected that their relationship wouldn’t change.  Though he knew Guy-Man had true affection for him--somewhere kept out of sight ostensibly--it was still disheartening for him to be treated as the annoying new guy again.  
         “Get to work.” Guy-Man grumbled, flicking his cigarette butt into the garbage can and leaving the back dock.

  
          They both scuttled back and forth with the various items that needed to be stocked, Thomas realizing that he was overly interested in everything his co-worker was doing.  From the irate way he carded his hand through his long hair as he read a chart, to his placing items on shelves with a roll of bread poking from his lips.  Admittedly, _embarrassingly_ he was also guilty of watching Guy-Manuel bend over and enjoying it perhaps a bit too much.  He held his hand over his eyes as he felt his cheeks flush; maybe if he tried talking to him a bit he wouldn’t be this creepy.  
         Taking a deep breath, he approached his co-worker with a face he hoped looked contrite "Say, Chéri, wher--"  
         "You've worked here long enough, if you still can't find where shit goes, why are you even still here?" The older man posed, Thomas balking at the intensity of the irritation in his icy eyes.  A half sneer curled Guy-Man’s upper lip as he waited for some sort of response.  
         “I-I…  I was just--” Thomas tried to spit out in defense, finding Guy-Man cutting him off again.  
         “How about instead of trying to find stupid reasons to talk to me, you go do your job and I’ll do mine, eh?” he snorted, “This isn’t _Mean Girls_ , making yourself look stupid is not going to catch my eye, Douchebag.”  
         Thomas deeply frowned his lower lip pushing out into an unintentional pout, “I wasn--”  
         “Yes, you were.” The shorter man began to push his cart back towards the back dock, rolling his eyes as Thomas’s gaze followed him, “Fuck, do your **job**!” he growled.  
          Afterwards, Thomas didn’t cease his tailing him around the store as he did his job.  He couldn’t help but think that Guy-Man was perhaps trying a bit too hard to keep their work and personal lives separate…  That was just the way he was seeing it.  However, the last thing he wanted to do was actually annoy him; by the way Guy-Man so often quickened his pace when he went around a corner or was returning to the loading dock to retrieve more items, there was no way he hadn’t noticed Thomas’s continued close proximity.  
          _He’s probably mad…_  Thomas internally lamented with a sigh.  He couldn’t help that he had some growing feelings and therefore wanted to spend all his time around the other man…   _You can help the creeping on him though._  With approaching university deadlines for many things, however, Thomas couldn’t help but recognize there was a sense of urgency in him for this relationship.  Not because he wanted…  Well, not because he wanted to screw him before he left or anything like that, but he wanted to know him and that window of time was swiftly closing.  
         Shuffling into the back dock, he noticed the other man had settled down at the table and was concentrating on eating a sandwich.  Deciding that they could maybe put earlier behind them, Thomas smiled down at him, blushing a bit as Guy-Man’s eyes flicked up to him for a millisecond before fixing themselves once more on his food.  
         “Can you _not_ hover?”  he suddenly muttered.  
         “U-Uh, sorry.”  Thomas quickly took a spot across from him at the table, “Is-is there nothing else left to do?”  
         Guy-Man snorted, “Nothing left _I_  have to do.” he bit into his sandwich, his eyes still fixed down at the table rather than on Thomas.  “I don’t know about you, you’re so slow.” he snorted contemptuously.  Yeah, he certainly had noticed...  
         “Oh.” Thomas frowned and looked to the line of carts that had stocking items lined up on them, “I don’t think I have anything…  It’s only been four hours an-anyway, I st-still have another four if I forgot something.”  
         “Mng…”  
         Sitting in silence, the only sound being the crunch of bread and food in Guy-Man’s mouth for a few minutes, Thomas finally sighed, “So--”  
         “I don’t come to work to make friends.” Guy-Man cut him off with a growl.  
         “I-I know…  I wasn’t going to complain about, uh…  Us not talking or anything.”  
         “Mn.”  
         “I just wanted to know if you were okay with me playing music.”  
         Instead of a verbal response, Guy-Man waved him on, Thomas pulling out his iPod and pressing “play”.  With a familiar opening riff beginning to blast from the tiny speaker on the device, Guy-Man gave an appreciative huff, “Phoenix, nice.  Or are you like everyone else and this is the only song by them you have?”  
         “Nah, I’m a big fan.” Thomas grinned, Guy-Man swearing he could see little stars in his eyes.  “I really, _really_ wanna meet them!” the boy continued, “Like, just t-to see what they’re, uh, they’re l-like, you know?”  As he finally noticed the flat expression on his reluctant interlocutor, Thomas sighed, his shoulders deflating, “I-I’m sorry…  I’ll shut up now.”  
         With a grunt and a glance at his crestfallen friend, Guy-Man chose to give in “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” he assured, “I don’t care either way.”  
         “Oh.”  The song played on between them, Thomas began to poke at what he had brought for dinner.  It stood to say he wasn’t hungry, however.  
         “Uh, what I meant was, er…” Guy-Man awkwardly started, realizing that he was going to need to be a bit more personable.  Out of nervousness, his sandwich fully disappeared as he crammed the rest of it into his mouth before speaking, “Not that I wasn’t listening anyway, I meant that, uh, I like the silence, but I like listening to you too.”  
         Thomas nodded in understanding, but didn’t continue.  
         Gritting his teeth, Guy-Man asked instead “Why do you want to see what they’re like so bad?” feeling guilty and motioning to the iPod sitting on the table.  
         “I dunno, I just think we’d jive really well.” Thomas explained in a quiet voice as he gave him a sheepish smile.  
         "You'd _jive_ ," Chéri snorted returning the smile "with men three times your age, eh?" Seeing the enthusiasm drift completely from Thomas's face, he felt like he had just suffocated a piglet to death. "Figure yourself an 'old' soul?" He tried to joke without snideness, but found it made things no better.  
         "Maybe sometimes." Thomas mumbled to the table.  "I think about these things all the time."  He continued, "Like, what if I could've been born earlier? Like, by a couple decades.  What if I could make music instead of go to university?  What if I lived here, not there?  Things like that."  
         "What's the point in it?" Guy-Man posed, "Things are the way they are, you're dealt a hand and you have to make the best of it."  
         "I just..." Thomas sighed.  
         "Don't get me wrong, everyone has thoughts like that.  You wish you had the means to do everything you want; you wish you had been raised better or that you still spoke with your parents.  Everyone wishes to be somewhere where they aren't sometimes."  
         "Speaking from personal experiences?" Thomas questioned morosely; with one statement, everything had fallen perfectly in line in Thomas's head.  
         “Mn, I was just giving examples.” he answered, folding his arms over his chest and looking off somewhere else.  After witnessing his friend’s habit of throwing up a boundary between himself and the world so many times, he recognized when he wasn’t going to be getting anything else out of him on a particular subject.  Besides, this wasn’t a conversation for work.  “You have tomorrow off, are we doing anything?” he asked to change the subject.  
         At first, Guy-Man didn’t answer and kept staring off at other things, the soundtrack of Phoenix still filling the space between them.  After some patient waiting on Thomas’s part, his counterpart eventually responded, “Yeah, that would be cool.”  
         A smile curved Thomas’s lips and he was surprised when Guy-Man smiled too, albeit, not at him directly, but he was smiling at all.  He giggled from across the table, catching the shorter man’s cocked-eyebrow attention.  
         “S-Sorry.” Thomas raised a hand to his neck as he blushed, “I-I really l-like to see you smile is-is all.”  
         “Well, I like to hear you giggle so we’re even.”  Lifting his hips, Guy-Man reached into his back pocket and fetched out his box of cigarettes, “Wanna smoke with me?”  
         “S-sure!”  Thomas stood as his friend did, the two of them heading over to the maze of products.  As he watched Guy-Man clamour up the side of a pallet, fitting his fingers in the barely-there ledges created by the seams of boxes, he moved to do the same.  His attempts were, however, thwarted by the other man pressing sternly down on his head.  
         “No, stay down there.” There was a playful tone to his voice and so Thomas did not take offense, he merely waited for Guy-Man to swing his legs out and dangle them by his shoulder.  The short man above jumped as he felt his young friend lean his head against his legs.  Then felt bad for it as the boy stood up straight, negating their contact.  Guy-Manuel had never believed in any sort of workplace "canoodling" but, eh, perhaps simple things were allowed?  He could hardly handle even his best friend--if that's what Mathieu could still be called--touching him in any manner, but considering he almost didn't mind impromptu contact with Thomas...  He closed his eyes and groaned, he was thinking too hard about this.  Thomas was pretty cool--if he would dare ever describe someone as such--but he wasn't special.  No one was special...  He was different though...  "Thank you." Guy-Manuel muttered.  
         "No problem." Thomas returned with a smile as the shorter man lit their cigarette and began burning through it.  "I get it."  
         "Do you?"  
         "Yeah, everyone says I don't know what personal boundaries are."  
         "You're just warm." Guy-Man corrected, "It’s not your fault.  I just don’t like anyone touching me."  
         "I'll remember that." Thomas grinned.  
         "You're young, you're supposed to be an intolerant asshat." He commented lightly.  
         "I used to go to a therapist.  We talked a lot about things like anxiety, personal comfort levels and how violating someone else's can have lasting, negative effects...  I just don't want to make others feel the way other people have made _me_ feel."  
         "And why the hell do people say you don't know what personal space is?" Guy-Man quietly asked, wondering if it would've been appropriate for him to run his fingers through Thomas's curly locks.  He found this boy so fascinating and wise beyond his years...  He began to wonder why he had needed to see a therapist at all.  
         "Because I sometimes forget that not everyone likes t-touch as much as I d-do." Thomas admitted with a modicum of embarrassment.  
         “Mnehehehe, you like _touching_ , huh?”  Oh, what on _Earth_ possessed him to say that?  
         “It’s very important.” Thomas honestly replied, the innuendo flying right over his fluffy head.  Which worked just as well for Guy-Man, though, he kind of was hoping, in retrospect, for some more cute stuttering.  “But if you don’t like it, I’ll remember.”  
         “Hm…  Did you see next week’s schedule?”  
         “Mn, yeah, it sucks.” Thomas chuckled, seeing that they, yet again, only worked one day with each other--next Sunday.  
         “I don’t know.” Guy-Man sighed, taking a breath of his cigarette and passing it down to Thomas.  “It’s a pain in the ass that I have to do all the unloading and stocking by myself those days, but we both get more days off and hours don’t suffer too much.” Flicking his eyes down to Thomas, he then added "We also don’t end up spending too much time together.”  
         Blushing at the jab, Thomas could not possibly comprehend how spending more time with Guy-Man was a bad thing.  He, nonetheless, reminded himself that not everyone worked the same in that respect.  Guy-Man needed space and when he thought about himself, he could occasionally be called the same.  If anything was to come of their relationship, it was best to leave work entirely out of the equation.  As obnoxious as it was working shifts alone and only getting to spend time with him at work one day a week, it really was better for them.  If his obsession with him today was anything to go by...  
         “I guess you’re right.” Thomas took a drag on the cigarette and let the smoke out slowly.  
         “More nights for us to walk around during.” Guy-Man offered as if to apologize for something.  
         “Yeah.” Thomas smiled, chuckling down at the floor.

\-------

         “Mn, if you could make your own music…  What would it be like?” Guy-Man questioned, laying on the bonnet of his car and staring up at the starlessness of the Parisian sky.  His shirt had rode up just a little to reveal his soft belly and the slight lick of hair going from his navel to disappear under his jeans.  
         “What do you mean ‘if I could’?” Thomas sniggered, “I _do_ make my own music!”  
         They had chosen to forgo hanging out Monday night as Guy-Man had gone a long time without sufficient sleep and was being called to work the next three days until he had the subsequent three off.  Just as well, it had been raining Monday night and Tuesday was pleasantly balmy in the city.  The two had already wandered around the city a good deal and hence had settled comfortably back at Guy-Man’s car settled in a convenience store parking lot.  
         “Well, what’s it like, then?” the older one questioned.  
         “Know who Justice is?”  
         “Of course I do.” Guy-Man scoffed, “They’re not really my thing, but they’re not bad.” he then chuckled and shoved his friend’s side, “More old men you want to get it on with?”  
         “Jeez, shut up, dude.” Thomas chuckled a bit self-consciously, still trying to decide whether or not he wanted to lay down next to him or stay sitting up.  “My music’s a little like that.  Not so hard though.”  
         “You call them ‘hard’?”  The shorter man curled in on himself as his his chuckling picked up into a full laugh.  “Hard like Nickleback?” and he was lost to relentless guffaws of absurdity.  
         “N-No!  I just don’t know how else to describe it!”  Thomas blushed furiously, “How the hell did Nickleback get drawn into this?”  
         “O-Oh, nothing.”  Guy-Man tried to calm his laughter, “I was just on a forum once and some kid,” he sniffed and took a deep breath, “some kid said he didn’t take shit from anybody because he listens to hardcore bands like Nickleback.”  
         “Whoa.”  Thomas held his hand up to his mouth as he too had to try not to laugh, “Never thought I’d ever feel sorry for someone over something like that.”  
         “So, you think you sound like Justice?”  
         “A little bit.”  
         “Jumping on the EDM bandwagon?” he teased.  
         “No, they were around before all of this Skrillex and Deadcat stuff.”  Thomas jumped with surprise as suddenly boisterous laughter tore from Guy-Man’s lips.  “W-What?!”  
         “It’s Dead- _mouse_.” he corrected, “And don’t knock the guy, he’s been around since the nineties.”  
         Thomas shook his head, his eyes closed, “I just don’t like his stuff, okay?”  
         “If you don’t even know his name, I doubt you know much of his music.”  
         “Did I just find _your_ man-crush?”  Thomas chuckled.  
         “I really dig the whole masked DJ thing.”  he tried to justify without blushing and failed.  
         “It’s kinda gimmicky, though, don’t you think?”  
         “Nah, people losing their shit in your general direction and they don’t even know what you look like?  Sounds like a blessing.”  Guy-Man mused up at his friend.  "Do a show, then step out of the phone booth as Clark Kent again."  
         “It wouldn’t be a gimmick if he actually _did_ that though.”  Thomas sighed critically.  
         “He only does shows out of helmet _occasionally_.”  Guy-Man excused, “By-in-large, not everyone knows what he looks like.”  he huffed as he noticed his friend’s adamant dissent “Look, I don’t know of many other people who have risen to such fame in the music industry without everyone knowing what they look like.  What he’s done is a very interesting idea.”  
         “I guess.” the younger man shrugged, “Just wish I could see someone do it better is all.”  
         “Hey, there are bands out there that sing about incest and bestiality as they set shit on fire, if you think Deadmau5 is gimmicky you have a very small frame of reference.”  
         “ _You’re_ confusing subject matter and showmanship for gimmicks now.”  Thomas pointed out.  
         “Then what is the difference?”  
         “He’s been around awhile, but did you ever hear anything about him _before_ the helmet became a thing?”  Thomas posed, seeing Guy-Man grow slightly flustered.  
         “Okay, fine; does it really matter though?  If I just like his music…”  
         “Of course not.” Thomas let out a light laugh with a smile.  “Why bother listening to someone at all if you don’t like their music?”  
         “Do people do that?” Guy-Man wondered.  
         “I think so…”  
         “Ew.”  
         “Yeah.”  Looking down to the hood of the car, he watched as Chéri turned over on his side to face Thomas’s direction.  
         “I don’t want to go to work.” the older man muttered. “But if I call in, you’ll get called to work.” he complained.  
         “Why can’t we hire a third person?” Thomas questioned, wondering why the company hadn’t thought about it before.  “It’s stupid for it to just be you and me.”  
         “No one has stuck around as long as you in the last three years, I don’t think they’ve even considered the possibility of third person yet…”  Guy-Man asserted before hesitantly lifting an arm and putting it across Thomas’s lap in a lazy half-hug.  
         Gently, Thomas laid a hand on the arm, beginning to stroke it back and forth in soothing sweeps.  Without Guy-Man’s protesting, he continued, enjoying the smoothness of his skin and the softness of the little hairs on his arm.  The strangest thing to him was how easy this was; Jules had been his closest friend for awhile and he could hardly think of doing something like this with him.  This was stuff he normally did with girls and while he tried to make it seem like none of this was coming as a surprise to him, it was all still quite shocking.  He wasn’t worried or disgusted or anything like that, it just had the feeling of a pleasant surprise.  
         “Hey…”  
         Lifting his head, Guy-Man raised his eyebrow slightly in silent questioning.  
         “Would you mind if I…?”  
         The shorter man pushed himself up from the hood of the car by his other arm, making Thomas’s effort little more than just a turn to his left and only a slight leaning down.  They molded their lips carefully together, neither really inexperienced, but testing each other.  Guy-Man took a deep breath as he felt Thomas’s unwillingness to part, trying to decide if he was okay with that or not.  His lips were soft and he could imagine them going other places that he would love, but he couldn’t shake the habitual discomfort that came with being vulnerable.  As he felt Thomas open his mouth and run his tongue along the seam of his lips, he backed off.  For a moment, he felt a bolt of anger race through him as Thomas followed after him, but felt it just as quickly die as the man just nuzzled their faces together.  
         Guy-Man felt his face flush at the tender gesture and supposed he didn’t mind it.  As he realized his arm was starting to get tired of holding him up, he shifted his hips to sit up straighter and rest his other arm on his folded right knee.  They remained quiet, Thomas keeping his tantalizing lips and warm cheeks against Guy-Man’s face and, once he thought about it, the contact was downright pleasant.  Words so often found their ways between them that he cherished the comfortable silence they were capable of sharing.  Even if they didn’t have this strange _thing_ between them, whatever it was anyway--something both innocent and platonic yet burning and suggestive--Guy-Man knew they were, at the very least, friend material.  In a different place, in a different time, he supposed if he wanted to look at things like Thomas did, maybe they were even the best of friends.  
         “Hey,” Thomas started again, leaning down against Guy-Man’s shoulder.  
         “Whenever you start a sentence like that I automatically know I’m either absolutely going to hate what comes out next or I’m going to completely love it.” the other man commented wryly.  
         “W-Well, I hope you like it…”  
         “What is it, Douch--er, what, Thomas?”  
         “Do you like…  Next time want to go on a, uhm…  An-an ac-actual date?” The young man asked, drawing away slowly from his friend.  
         “What do you mean by ‘actual’ date?” Chéri interrogated.  
         “Y-You know, uh,” Thomas reached up to rub his neck, Guy-Man’s eyes flicking to the hand before back to his eyes, “I-I-I could, um…  W-We could…  Mn, y-y-you kn--”  
         “Deep breath.” his friend reminded.  
         Thomas heeded the advice, inhaling slowly and closing his eyes for a moment of zen before opening them again and addressing him with a bit more confidence, “I was hoping we could find a place that’s open really late, some-some cafe, or whatever and have dinner-ish together.”  
         Raising an eyebrow, Guy-Man came back with “Like a couple?”  
         “I-I-I…  I _guess_?”  Thomas rubbed his fingers harshly into the muscles of his neck as he spoke, “Or I guess-guess not, or-or-or--”  
         “ _Thomas_ …”  Chéri stopped him, putting a hand on the arm Thomas had raised.  He tugged it away from his neck as he began speaking, holding it gingerly between his rough fingers “I’m only asking because…  I think you need to realize that there really _is_ no one else in my life that’s like you right now.” he gently explained.  “We could go and be something casual, that’s fine, but I’m saying that there really is no else that I’m dating, on the fence about, or otherwise…”    The older man felt his stomach churn, emotions were hard, talking about them was even harder.  
         “W-W-Well, y-you d-d-don’t think-think that m-maybe it’s t-t-too much?  Too soon?” Thomas posed, “I mean, we’ve not b-been hanging out f-for v-v-very long and, I….”  he huffed, angry at his inability to articulate himself.  
         “Thomas, I find it an anomaly that I’ve actually found someone I can stand for longer than ten minutes--someone I can stand touching me at all.”  There was that calculated tone of voice again; Guy-Man was venturing his point of view not because he had to--he didn’t have to do shit--but, because he wanted Thomas to know.  “This is a learning experience for me.” he paused to chuckle, the intensity of the moment loosening with such simple noises “I haven’t dated anyone since I was sixteen or seventeen.”  
         Taking a moment to breathe and try to comprehend what Guy-Man was getting at, Thomas was grateful when Guy-Man, yet again, elaborated.  
         “I don’t know how any of this is supposed to go anymore.”  The red of his cheeks became discernable underneath the orange light of the streetlamp, “Things are different than they used to be…  And I’m saying that I want to see where this goes.”  
          “I-I d-d-do too.”  
          Smiling slowly up at him Guy-Man added, “We don’t need to call it anything unless you want to.”  
          “O-Okay…”  Thomas smiled, his lips parted vaguely, “Would you mind if I kissed you again?”  
         “That’s the only thing you’re concerned about here, isn’t it?”  Guy-Man playfully jibbed, watching as Thomas turned beet red and uttered a slew of stutters, “Shh-shh, I was joking!”  
         “I-It’s not the only thing I’m-I’m concerned about, it might be the only thing I’m _thinking_ about right now, though.”  Thomas admitted with a good deal of shame before his partner leaned in and they kissed again.  
         It was long and slow and strangely sensual considering how their tongues were somehow kept out of the equation.  Soft lips moving over each other and brushing the budding whiskers on each other’s faces.  Thomas was reminded that his hand had been resting between Guy-Man’s for quite some time as he felt a gentle squeeze, prompting him to squeeze back.  The taller man released a breath against him, turning his whole body towards their contact.  Slowly, giving his partner a chance to protest, he raised his other arm to put it around his shoulders and felt it quite positively met.  
         “Look at us, like a couple of teenagers making out in a car park.” Guy-Man huffed, drawing from the kiss, but still ensconced in Thomas.  That last part, he realized, wasn’t going to last for long, but for the moment it was pleasant.  
         “We _are_ teenagers.” Thomas giggled.  
         “Shh, no one else has to know.” the older man whispered, giving the apex of Thomas’s chin a gentle peck.  As he allowed himself to lean on his friend’s chest and shift closer to him so they were practically in each other’s laps, he let out a disdainful grunt.  “There’s the sun.”  
         “Not yet.”  Thomas soothed, seeing the gentle lighting of the sky between the buildings.  “We still have some time.”  
         “I need to get you home.”  
         “I guess you’re right.” he sighed, regretfully letting go as Guy-Man shrugged him off and slid from the hood of the car.  “Want to smoke on the way?”  
         “That’d be awesome.”  Guy-Man answered, “Now get in the car, Douchebag.”

\-------

         “Have you fucked yet?”  
         “Jules!”  Sitting on his bed, Thomas raised his hands to his face as it proceeded to turn red.  
         “So…  No?” Julian assumed with a chuckle, spinning around in Thomas’s office chair.  
         “Of course not!  W-W-We’re only jus-just now going on our first _actual_ date tonight.”  
         “I thought that’s what you were doing _last_ week.”  
         “We kinda both went into that not knowing what the other wanted, so…  You know…  It was just a joke more than anything else and-and…  So, this time, we know.” Thomas managed a sheepish grin as Julian raised an eyebrow and sighed.  
         “He’s not being an asshole to you anymore, is he?”  
         “At-At work, maybe, but…  We need to keep that separate from this anyway, I think…”  
         “Still no reason for him to--”  
         “But Jules--”  
         “Shut up and let me talk, Thomas.”  
         “O-Okay…”  The taller boy looked down to the carpet of his room with a sigh.  
         “If he’s being an asshole to you at all, that’s a sign he’s just going to do it later.  An asshole is an asshole.”  
         “Or maybe he just pretends to be an asshole so other people don’t hurt him?”  
         “Is that at all _healthy_?”  
         “That’s not for you or me to decide, Julian…  He is the way he is and I…  I-I…” Again he sighed, surprised that this time Julian wasn’t trying to beat him to the punch.  “I don’t care, not really.  He’s demanding at work, but I think that he should be, job first, socializing if time is allowing.  When we’re alone though,” Building a bit more confidence from Julian’s attentive silence, he went on, “when we’re alone he’s so understanding.  He doesn’t try to talk over my stuttering, he just waits.  Sometimes he’ll remind me I need to take a breath and calm down, but he’s very…”  
         “Aren’t I?” Julian posed.  
         “This isn’t about you.”  Thomas immediately told him, feeling a minute sense of guilt as the expression on Julian’s face turned bemused.  
         “I know dude…  Chill out.”  
         “I-I’m sorry.”  
         “Don’t apologize.”  
         “Ehm, but well…  He’s easy to talk to if we’re not at work and even when we’re not talking, just being together feels kind of good.  There are some things that happen every now and again and he kinda locks up, but I can’t say I don’t have anything that does that to me.”  As he spoke, Thomas watched his friend slowly nod.  
         “Okay…  Now let me talk for a second.  If he is getting attached to you and you think that maybe you two have something special…  Have you told him yet that you’re leaving for LA for school?”  
         “O-Oh, I-I-I--”  
         “Thomas, if this guy is as fragile and deeply emotional as you’re trying to get at here, I really don’t think you should put off telling him.”  
         “But what if he--”  
         “If he decides you’re not worth the time after that then you have your answer for how this is going to go.”  Thomas didn’t respond, he silently contemplated his floor.  “You care about him a lot already, I know…  So, don’t fuck with him and be honest.”  
         “Okay…”

  
         In the hours of Julian’s departure and Thomas once more fretted over what to wear on his date, he couldn’t help the feeling of impending doom.  It wasn’t the date that worried him, obviously what worried him were the reactions Guy-Man--Chéri, his Chéri--could possibly have to the news he was leaving in August.  He tried to soothe himself, tried to tell himself that he had told him that he was leaving for school at some point and maybe it had been in the back of Chéri’s mind the whole time.  Maybe, in spite of knowing that, Chéri had decided it was okay to pursue something with him, just for the sake of seeing where things could go.  
         The dread built up in the pit of his stomach until he was gripping the edges of his dresser, his nails digging into the scarred wood, a cold sweat beading.  He bit his lip, he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to quash the anxiety as he found his heartbeat growing increasingly worrying and erratic.  He tried to take deep breaths, but found the action without comfort as tears pricked at his eyes and his whole body felt heavy.  
          _Oh my, god._  He realized as he began to sob and sink to the floor, his breathing coming in gasps and tears streaming.  /You didn’t take your medicine today, did you?  Thomas heard Julian’s voice in his head.  As he felt the absurdity of the moment set-in, it threw itself into the paralyzing slurry of his emotions.  
         “Thomas?!”  He heard his grandma’s voice as he brought his hands to his face, curling in on himself and sobbing all the more.  “Thomas are you okay?!”  She knocked on his door urgently as he gasped for breath and rolled onto his back on his floor, unable to do much more for the moment.  “Please answer me!”  
         “I-I-I…” he shook on the floor, sweat rolling from his forehead.   _You’re going to be fine.  You’re going to be fine.  Everything will be okay, you’ll be just fine, just fine, just fine._  The mantra in his best friend’s voice echoed over and over inside his skull as he desperately tried to get a handle on his breathing.  His sobs slowly tapered off into barely audible whimpers and whines, the sensation of the carpet against his bare skin coming back to him.  He sniffled and shivered again, throwing an arm up around his eyes.  
         “Thomas?”  
         Letting out a heavy breath, Thomas stood shakily, forgoing a shirt as he stumbled to his door and unlocked it.  His aging grandmother, pale with worry and wringing her hands stood on the other side, a look of surprise on her face as her grandson came into view.  He looked a mess, his eyes red and puffy from the sobbing she had heard, his body sweaty and of sickly pallor.  She didn’t have to watch him sniffle again or hear the tiniest of timid syllables be uttered by him before she pulled him down into a tight hug.  
         “I-I’m s-s-s-sorry.” he apologized as she rubbed his moist back, “I-I-I w-was hav-having a--”  
         “I know.” She soothed.  “Are you okay now?” her voice was gentle and kind, she sounded a lot like his mom and made him cry all over again.  
         “I’ll be fine.” he whispered, his fingers dug into the soft folds of her dress as he stained its collar with his tears.  “D-Did I wake you up?”  
         “That doesn’t matter.” she shushed moments before they both heard a knock at the door.  Pushing herself more against Thomas in that moment she waveringly asked, “Who could that be so late?”  
          _Oh no._  Thomas’s head began to pound all over and let out a small breath, “I’ll get it.”  
         “Do you know who it is?!”  
         “Yeah, it’s a friend of mine.”  
         “Julian?”  As Thomas stepped away to pull on an old t-shirt, he rubbed his face, hoping that he didn’t look as pathetic as he felt.  
         “No, you haven’t met him yet, we just started hanging out not that long ago.”  
         “So late?” she questioned, shuffling after him as he went for the door.  “Is this who you’ve been going out with at night?”  
         “Uh….”  Thomas looked over his shoulder to her with some surprise, “Yeah.”  
         “Well, let him in.” She gave the small of his back a push as he froze at the front door.  “You’re not going anywhere tonight.”  
         Huffing, and taking one last soothing breath, he opened the door.


	7. Where I'm Going--Cut/Copy

         Answering the door in a ratty t-shirt, sweaty and eyes still puffy from his panic-attack was not Thomas’s idea of the best way to greet a date.  It also stood to say that this wasn’t even going to be a date anymore and that too was frustrating.  Thomas gave a thick swallow before his face took upon an expression of a discomforted smile.  His Cheri stood on his doorstep, a cigarette poking out of his lips, his phone in his right hand and a roll of something loosely held in his left.  
         “G-Good even--” Thomas couldn’t even finish himself as Guy-Man looked up from his phone to him with a grin.  His chest fluttered and his own nervous smile faltered when his friend’s expression turned to concern.  
         “Is everything all right?” Guy-Man asked, his eyes flitting up and down Thomas’s frame, “Fine attire for a date.” he attempted humor, it falling flat on the clearly distraught teen standing in the doorway.  
         “Thomas, did he say date?”  the older woman standing behind the skinny youth asked, trying to look past his clammy body.  
         Right on cue, Guy-Man tossed the roll of whatever was in his left hand off the stoop.  He quickly put on his best, disinterested scowl and crossed his arms.  It was the way of other youth to be more interested in one’s phone than other people, right?  
         “H-He was joking.” Thomas wearily sighed, suppressing a smile.  He did wonder what it was Cheri had brought with him if it needed to be discarded so quickly.  The man side-stepped to allow his grandmother to greet the newcomer to the house.  “We had jus-just been p-planning on hanging out tonight.”  
         The older woman looked over the boy she had never met before--he was only a few centimeters taller than her!--it was a critical gaze, albeit hopeful.  When Guy-Man raised an eyebrow at her with interest, she spoke again, “I’m glad you’re making new friends, Thomas, but you’re going nowhere tonight after that episode.”  
         Thomas’s already deep blush spread to his neck in full view of his…  Friend…  Guy-Man had obviously not missed the significance of the statement if his expression meant anything.  
         “You’ll just have to stay in, but try to keep the noise down.”  Thomas’s grandma pushed him away, waving Cheri inside, “So, what’s your name?”  
         “Guy-Manuel, m’am.”  The short man supplied politely, closing the door behind himself.  “I’m Thomas’s senior at work.”  
         “Oh,” the woman looked back to her grandson, “I thought you said the only person you worked with was--”  
         “Th-That’s not important!”  Thomas cut her off before she could speak more, seeing Guy-Man smirk a little.  While it was a blessing he wasn’t offended, Thomas still didn’t want him to hear any of the things he had frustratedly divulged to his grandmother.  Though, Cheri had to know he was a jerk…  
         “If you say so…”  The older woman then looked down to her nightgown, making an embarrassed squeaking noise, “I think I’ll just go back to bed.” She gave Guy-Manuel a motherly smile, “Make yourself at home deary.”  Turning to Thomas she then instructed, “You be a good host now, you hear?  And make sure you lock up when he leaves.”  
         “Y-Yes Granny…” Thomas swallowed nervously as she shuffled back to her bedroom.  He waited for the tell-tale click of her bedroom door’s latch before returning his attention to Cheri.  “I-I’m s-s-s--”  
         “What happened?”  
         “Oh… Uh…  I-I jus-just…”  Thomas took a deep breath and let it out slowly, “Do you want to just go sit in my room for a bit?”  
         “Not particularly.”  Guy-Man had since raised his arms to fold them over his chest.  
          _Ouch…_  “O-Okay…”  
         “Are you going to answer my question?”  
         “Oh, right, u-uh…  I-I have, um, some anxiety p-problems and if-if I d-don’t take my medication and I s-start to stress out about-bout something I get, um…”  
         Guy-Man nodded, Thomas not needing to finish, he looked to the side for a moment, “Hang on.”  
         Curiously, Thomas watched the other man go back out his front door and hop off the front porch to grab whatever it was he tossed away earlier.  When Guy-Man returned he blinked a few times in disbelief at the roll of brown paper he held in his hand.  Or rather, not so much at the paper, but the cluster of daisies therein being held out to him.  The blush from earlier returned fullfold as Guy-Man averted his eyes, a slight pinkness coming to his round cheeks.  
         With Thomas just staring, speechless at the flowers, Cheri began to panic, waving the modest bouquet up and down at him, “Do you want it or not?” He gruffly interrogated, waving it at him with a bit more ferocity.  
         “O-Of course!”  Thomas quickly responded at the prompting, “T-Th-They’re l-lovely!” he made sure to compliment, taking the flowers from him.  “If-If you want to, y-you can wait in the kitchen while I find something to-to p-put them in.”  
         “I think I would rather sit in your room with you, honestly.”  Cheri informed him, pulling the front door to behind him again.  He looked around the house, it was quaint and homey, nothing like his parents’ place.  
         “R-Really?  I-I thought you said you w-weren’t interested...”  
         “I am now.” the other man shrugged, blinking slowly at him whilst holding eye contact.  
         “O-Okay…  I’m sorry, again…”  Thomas turned to locate a vase for the flowers, Guy-Man trailing after him.  
         “It’s not your fault.” his friend assured, glancing at pictures on the walls as they passed them down the hallway, the whole house seeming to pay homage to the young man; etched into a doorframe was Thomas’s height there, near the baseboard was a faded, sloppy rendition of the name “Thomas” in permanent marker in a three-year-old’s handwriting here…  “Do you have any siblings?”  
         “No.” Thomas answered simply, finding a minimalist, cylindrical vase and striding into the bathroom to fill it with water. “Just me.”  
          _How are you not a brat?_  Guy-Man wondered internally.  
         “Do you?”  Thomas repaid the question in kind, unwrapping the flowers and tossing the paper away into the nearest rubbish bin.  
         “One.”  The guest replied in a tone that said “end of conversation”.  
         “My room’s th-this way.”  Thomas motioned awkwardly down to the end of the hall.  He hadn’t really considered that his first time bringing Guy-Man into his room would be so soon.  Or under such emotional duress…  Even the best laid plans of mice and men go awry, though.  
         Silently, Guy-Man followed after him into the cramped bedroom, its walls lined with posters from all eras of music.  His eyes fell on Thomas’s bass guitar as well as his modest set-up of electronic instruments nestled beneath his stereo on his entertainment stand.  At sight of his apparently well-loved record-player, he smiles, seeing a collection of records meticulously filed on the shelf of the stand.  The room was a perfect representation of the man he really was beginning to bloom soft feelings for, it was quite…   _Swell_.  
         Thomas furrowed his brows, looking about the room for a good place to sit the vase.  With so many electronics amid his well-used space, he didn’t want to risk his clumsiness knocking the water onto them.  In the end, he shrugged, thinking of the only surface that never had anything on it.  Reaching out, he pulled up the blinds over his window, settling the vase safely on its sill.  
         “I-I know there’s not r-really much to do here, but…”  Thomas trailed off, seeing Guy-Man squatted down in front of his record player.  He hadn’t used the player in a while, not since he had gotten his stereo…  By his cheri’s interest in it, however, he figured he could stand to use it tonight.  He plucked the stereo’s controller up off his nightstand and waited for the blue light of the machine to turn off before slowly walking over to his friend, “F-Fine an-anything you like?”  
         “Daniel Vangarde?  Really?”  Guy-Man smiled up at him, Thomas choking for a second at the criticism, “Chill out, I like some of his tunes too.”  He stood with the LP in hand, going to remove it from its sleeve.  
         “Um…  C-Could we l-listen to some-something else?”  
         Guy-Man raised an eyebrow at him curiously, “Sure…  Uh, how’s about _The Chronic_?”  
         Not exactly the most _romantic_ album he had on hand, but it was at least better than the previous option.  Thomas nodded and Guy-Man squatted down again to exchange the records in the holder.  He watched as the man took the record from the sleeve and laid it on the track, flipping the needle down once the proper speed had been reached.  It was time then for him to laugh;  Guy-Man _perfectly_ mouthed-along with the intro of the album, appropriate hand gestures to match…  Staying in or not, Thomas had the feeling tonight was going to be awesome anyway.

  
         “Have you seen this one yet?” Thomas questioned, pulling up a movie file from his computer.  
         “ _Delicatessen_?”  Guy-Man shook his head, his attention drawn away by the music still filling the space between their conversation “Fuckin’ hoes, clockin’ dough, up to no good--”  
         “--We flip flop and serve hoes like flapjacks…”  Thomas completed the lyric in time for him, both of them laughing afterwards, “What were they ev-even talking about?”  He questioned, looking over his shoulder to watch Guy-Man dance to the ridiculous song.  
         “Clearly that ‘bitches ain’t shit, but hoes and tricks’.” Guy-Man quoted in his most proper voice while the song segued into the next verse.  Thomas just chuckled a bit, leaning back in his computer chair.  
         “Want to watch this with me?”  
         “Mn, what’s it about?”  
         “The director is Jean-Pierre Jeunet…”  Thomas answered in place of something more relevant to the question.  
         Kicking off his shoes, Guy-Man plopped down on Thomas’s bed, “Put it on.”  
         Thomas laughed, his eyes crinkling with his smile as he set the movie to start playing on his computer screen.  His heart fluttered in his chest when Cheri inched over to the side of the bed closer to the wall.  It wasn’t like the two had never laid next to each other before!  They had just never laid next to each other on a bad…  Oh, god, what was he supposed to do, he felt a cold sweat form a sheen on his forehead as he shakily leaned on the bed to climb onto it.  
         “Are you okay?”  Guy-Man asked calmly, his brows furrowing with concern.  
         “O-Oh, y-y-yeah, I’m-I’m…”  he fell silent as his bedmate reached an arm out to him, beckoning him closer onto the bed.  Not wanting to keep him waiting, Thomas clamored next to him, not sure entirely of how much space he should leave between them.  Either way, it didn’t seem like Guy-Man cared and he was, as usual, overthinking it.  
         “This is a cannibal movie, isn’t it…?”  Guy-Man commented at the opening scene, paying Thomas no mind as he propped himself up on the bed next to him, their arms touching.  
         “M-Maybe.” Thomas chuckled under his breath, still trying to soothe his nerves.  “I-It’s _more_ than just that th-though.”  
         “How _romantic_.”  the other man answered, rolling his eyes fondly.  
         “Like Dr. Dre is romantic!”  
         “Hey, I was going to play some of Vangarde’s stuff, but _no_.”  Guy-Man teased at Thomas’s opposition to his earlier music choice.  
         “W-Well…”  Thomas supposed he that _should_ say something about it…  “D-Do you find it particularly, um…  R-R-Romantic to talk to your p-p-parents?”  The subject of his friend’s parents always threw up an iron wall between them, it seemed.  At least he had known it was coming this time when Cheri turned defensive.  
         “My parents don’t talk anymore.” the other man grumbled, “What the fuck does that have to do with anything?”  
         “I’m s-sorry.”  Thomas looked away, taking in a deep breath and letting it out.  “I don’t m-mean to-to-to keep bringing u-up things that-that are painful for you.”  
         "It’s annoying, not _painful_ for me Thom--"  
          "I lost my parents too." Thomas cut-in, leaving Guy-Man speechless and fumbling for words.  The only noise between them for those few dead seconds consisted of the opening lines of the heavily amber-filtered movie on Thomas’s computer.  
         "I never said I lost them!" He bit back when he could articulate himself again. "They just lost me." He huffed.  As he grumbled and crossed his arms over his chest, the gravity of Thomas's admission hit him and he frowned, "I'm so sorry." Poured from his mouth before he had the power to stop it.  
         "No..." Thomas started, reevaluating his friend quickly in his head.  " _I'm_ sorry.  M-My parents didn't have a choice when they 'left' me.  Y-Yours did."  
         Neither spoke for awhile, still letting the movie play.  Still, they didn’t watch the film and occupied their eyes other places than each other.  Thomas preferred to solemnly contemplate the turntable which was still spinning without a track to play; he remembered moving it up from the locked studio in the basement, something of his father’s to keep.  Meanwhile, Guy-Man stared at the daisies he had brought for Thomas, the light of the computer painting their white petals different colors with each camera angle change.  
         “So…  Does Vangarde remind you of your parents?”  Guy-man eventually asked, lifting his arm from merely touching Thomas’s to laying it on top of his, the palm of his hand against Thomas’s knuckles.  
         “He was my dad.”  Thomas murmured, feeling tears prick in his eyes.  
         “ _What_?”  The older man sat up and looked down at him, incredulous.  “But…  When were you born?”  
         “Ninety-six.”  Thomas groaned a little, still pushing back his tears, “I was a surprise…  Mom and Dad said I would’ve had an elder brother, born sometime in the seventies, but Mom miscarried so…”  
          Guy-Man was still speechless, seeing the tears budding in Thomas’s eyes, if he remembered right, he had read about Vangarde’s death sometime last year.  A drunk driver plowed into him and his wife…  
         “I’m sorry…”  Guy-Man apologized again, his voice barely a whisper, almost drowned out by a sniffle from the other person on the bed.  
         “I-I’m b-b-better now.” Thomas reassured him, “I-I-I h-had some…  Episodes when they first passed.  I had to go t-t-to a th-th-th--"  
         “Therapist.”  
         “And a-a-a-a psychiatrist.”  
         “For your anxiety?”  
         “S-suicide at-at-attempts.”  
          _Oh…_  Guy-Man squeezed Thomas’s wrist, not knowing what to say to that…  He’d had low moments, really bad ones once moving out of his parent’s place.  Nothing like that though.  
         “I-I-I’m sorry f-for ru-ruining to-tonight…”  
         “Don’t apologize…  I’m…”  He thought for a moment the best way to articulate his reassurance.  He couldn’t afford to come off as callous here.  “I consider myself lucky that you were comfortable enough to share that with me.”  Even though, he supposed that he perhaps goaded Thomas into it.  It was his fault he was so upset…  
         “You’re not m-m-m…  Angry?”  
         “No.  Of course not…  My parents don’t talk to me just because I didn’t want to go to University.”  Guy-Man presented with a little humor.  
          “That’s _awful_!”  Thomas sniffled, turning to face him, his face earnestly outraged at the actions of his _cheri_ ’s parents.  “Th-th-th-that’s the s-stupidest th-thing I’ve ever h-h-heard of!”  
         Uncomfortable with the sympathy coming from the man whose parents _died_ Guy-Man shrugs him off, “Don’t make this about me…”  
          “N-N-No!  Th-That r-really is--”  
         “Stop it…”  
         Thomas went quiet, wiping his tears from his eyes; he’d done far too much crying this evening.  The two just stared at each other for awhile.  For some reason, it wasn’t awkward or funny, it was somehow soothing, the silence and quiet acceptance of how the other had come to be who they were.  
         Surprisingly, when words finally broke between them, it was Guy-Man to do it, “Can I hold you?”  
         Thrown off, Thomas just nodded quickly, awkwardly reaching out towards him as Guy-Man extended his arms.  In the end, the shorter man laid Thomas’s arms at his side and pulled him close with his unexpectedly firm arms.  Of course, Thomas was reminded that Guy-Man wasn’t a noodle like him--the other man carried around heavy loads in his arms every day at work and had been doing it for a significantly longer time than him.  
          The two nestled against each other’s bodies, Thomas pulled close against Guy-Man’s chest and his head tucked beneath his chin.  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this serene or safe.  Making sure he wasn’t disturbing him at all, Thomas raised an arm to drape it over Cheri’s midsection, craving more points of contact with him.  
          “I know you d-d-don’t like talk-talking about it, but…  If-If-If y-you ever want to-to-to talk about…  About your parents, I’m-I’m listening.”  Thomas minutely tilted his head back, pressing his lips daintily to the underside of his bedmate’s chin.  
         “Maybe sometime soon…”  His usually gruff friend relented, shivering the smallest bit with the contact of his lips.  Craning his neck back and tipping his head down, he brought both of them nose-to-nose, his heart fluttered and his stomach churned--why couldn’t the butterflies just pick one place to live inside of him and stay there?  Without any true cue, both men brought their lips together.  Unlike prior times, Guy-Man’s tongue was the first one to make an appearance, tracing the outline of Thomas’s lips and delightfully entering inside the mouth that quickly opened for it.  
         “Oh…”  Thomas let out in an airy voice, raising his tongue to Guy-Man’s and flicking it over his tip.  He moaned lightly again as the other man teased his tongue to follow his into his own mouth.  Guy-Man sucked on the invited tongue, letting out a moan much like Thomas, but considerably higher in volume.  
         “Thomas, _oh_ ,” the shorter man moaned against his lips, prompting Thomas’s arm on his side to move up to his face.  They continued their kissing, the movie _entirely_ forgotten amid their comforting caresses of hands and lips.  
         When they did part, breaths coming quickly and hearts racing, they stared back at each other, big brown eyes and calculating blues never being a better match.  They came together again, their hands beginning to wander over each other’s backs, Cheri’s clawed at Thomas’s old tee and the younger man’s gently found the hem of his friend’s polo.  With the contact of Thomas’s clever, long fingers against Guy-Man’s skin, the shorter man was lost to the pleasant feelings blooming in his chest.  
         Both men parted again to sit up and pull their shirts from one another, throwing them to the floor.  Thomas immediately climbed into Guy-Man’s lap, putting one hand to his partner’s cheek and wrapping the other around to his back.  With Guy-Man’s approving moan and his hands reaching around to the backs of Thomas’s shoulders, fingers alternating between digging nails into the muscles and massaging, Thomas broke their lips apart to lick up and down his neck.  They began to rut their hips together in their passion, noises so obscene and arousing leaving Guy-Man’s mouth.  
         “ _Thomas_ ,” Guy-Man moaned, shivering with the motions of their hips and the gentle ministrations on his neck.  He slid his hands around to Thomas’s front, running them between them over the hair just beginning to grow on his young body.  He massaged his chest and nipples, feeling Thomas’s reaction in the shakes that racked his body and only just hearing the higher-pitched sighs by his ear.  
         “Oh, my god…”  Thomas panted, pulling away from pleasuring Guy-Man to rest his forehead tiredly on his shoulder.  He hugged him close, loving the feel of their skins sliding over each other.  This was the most he had done in a long time and it felt…  It felt just _wonderful_ …  He couldn’t get his mind off of what he had to tell the other man, however.  He shouldn’t do this without telling him that first.  It would be unforgivable to lead the hopeful man on.  Even knowing that, he couldn’t make himself say it.  He wanted this blissful congress of the two of them to last just a bit longer; to still have Guy-Man’s trust and attention for a little longer…  
         Feeling Thomas’s energy for the moment die, Guy-Man held the half-naked man against him carefully, a smile curving his lips, “Decide the movie is more interesting?” he joked.  
         “O-O-Oh, n-n-no, I-I-I”  
         “Shhhh.”  Guy-Man soothed, catching Thomas’s plump, pink lips with his and settling down to the bed with him, “I’m…  I’m _happy_ just to hold you like this.”  
         Doubling the force of his embrace, Thomas nuzzled against his…  Were they “boyfriends” now, technically?  While he wanted to address that question with Guy-Man he knew now was not the time.  The moment was too perfect for just laying with each other and enjoying the company and a good movie.  
         “Where were we?”  Guy-Man questioned, adjusting his crotch just a little, his underwear just a little…   _Uncomfortable_ with their earlier ministrations.  “Is she trying to Rube Goldberg herself to death?”  
          “Kinda…”  Thomas chuckled at the dark, comedic elements of the film.  “I can r-roll it back if-if-if you’d l-like?”  
          “Yeah…  I think that would have this make a little more sense.”  
         Thomas climbing off him, he shrugged, “Eh, not r-really.” he chuckled, especially seeing the way Guy-Man shook his head, “W-Would you really expect anything else fr-from a movie like this?”  
         “No, I guess not.” Guy-Man smiled at the other man, inching back against him as he climbed back onto the bed, the two cuddling up blissfully with one another and somehow managing to fall asleep before even seeing the queer movie’s ridiculous cello ending.


	8. Happy Ending--Mika

         “So…”  Thomas began, his head tipped back and staring up at the night sky.  Guy-Man sat next to him, a cigarette poking from his lips, they shouldn’t have been in this park past sunset, but the shorter of the two had amazing persuasive skills. “What do you want to do when you’re done at the grocery store?”  
         “I don’t know.”  the other man answered honestly, he was too tired to throw up his usual walls towards Thomas that evening.  Thomas had shared a deep secret with him that night last week--he had shared many--he figured that the least he could do was show that same degree of trust.  “Maybe something with art…  Be a cartoonist.”  
         He blew a long trail of smoke out his lips, tipping his chin just so slightly to see Thomas still gazing with wonder into the night sky.  For a second, he considered paying the question in kind, but he then would’ve had to pretend that he hadn’t been listening to Thomas that night at work.  A sound engineer…  What did that entail?  He supposed that meant that Thomas could be a foley artist for movies, make music, work in a recording house or as a sound designer in a theatre…  Be a music producer, perhaps…  Why was he mulling this all over inside when he could just ask the man sitting next to him?  
         “Really?  Y-You can draw?”  Thomas questioned, lifting his head from the back of the park bench to look down at him.  
         “Uh…  Kind of.”  Guy-Man felt himself begin to blush and he took another drag off his cigarette, casually tossing his hair over his shoulder.  
         “Can I see sometime?!”  At Thomas’s avid enthusiasm, Guy-Man had the first instinct to tell him “no”.  His art was personal!  Thomas had no right to it!  Though, a warm light in the center of his chest that had bloomed into a flame for the dorky boy melted that resolve.  
         “Maybe.”  
\-------  
         As things turned out, two nights later, Chéri’s vague “maybe” became a “yes”.  Thomas hitched a ride with Bern from work to the home he and Guy-Man shared.  Needless to say, Bern was more than a little confused about Thomas’s request, but he didn’t care as long as his surly roommate was going to be the one to transport him home.  
         “Hey, man, I don’t care what you two are doing, just don’t be loud, okay?”  The mountainous man impressed to Thomas as he let the boy into his home.  This, understandably sent Thomas into a slew of stutters as his face turned bright red.  
         “What d-d-d-did you think--”  
         “Chill, dude!” Bern raised his hands as Thomas began, a big grin on his face, “I’m _happy_ the little dude’s making friends again!”  
         “O-Oh, I-I-I--”  
         Again, Thomas was to be cut off by a resident of the home whose doorway in which he stood, “ _Little_ , Bernerd?”  Guy-Man hissed from the stairwell behind his massive roommate.  The abode was dark behind Bern, the only light the cherry-red end of Chéri’s cigarette that caught all the dour lines of his stern expression.  “Come over here and say that again.”  
         “Both of you just need to chill.”  Bern released a heavy sigh, his breath painted with the stagnant, wet scent of weed.  
         “Mn.”  Guy-Man jerked his chin for Thomas to come inside and, wanting to escape the awkward moment, Thomas obeyed, closing the door behind himself.  
         “Good evening, Chéri.”  Thomas greeted on the way to the man’s room.  
         “Yeah, good evening, Thomas.” the shorter man casually responded, letting out a tail of smoke from his mouth.  Thomas wrinkled his nose a little, he smoked when the mood so fit him, but he wasn’t so sure he liked the smoking in the house--it wasn’t any of his business, however, and so he kept his mouth shut.  “How was work?”  Chéri went on to ask, ushering Thomas into the first room to the right at the top of the stairs.  
         “I-It was okay,” Thomas admitted, “very boring, do you think they’ll ever hire a third person?”  As the younger man stepped into the bedroom, not only did he catch the distinct outdoorsy smell floating in through the open window, but there was a smell more deeply rooted into the room’s effects.  It was sweet and somehow spicy, it made Thomas’s heart flutter and his palms begin to sweat as a sweet feeling melted inside him.  The man imagined his face buried in a dark-colored polo, it was warm and the knit of it pleasantly rough against his cheek.  He smiled back at his _chéri_ as he closed the bedroom door behind him, their eyes meeting for a second and a blush flowing onto Guy-Man’s cheeks.  
         “I don’t know.”  Chéri walked past him, brushing their shoulders together.  “It wouldn’t really change my shifts that much.  New people don’t know how to do shit.” he playfully snarked over his shoulder, walking to the pewter ashtray sitting on the sill of the open window.  
         “Aw, come on, you gotta give us a chance sometimes.”  Thomas strode right up next to him; the view out the window was just the side yard and of a few more homes on the dark street, but it was a nonetheless pleasant picture.  With the already thudding motions in his chest, Thomas leaned lower, not wanting to assume, but wanting to ask.  
         Guy smirked, the ashes of the tray before him holding his coy attention as he uselessly drew swirling designs in them with the butt of his cigarette, “No, because who knows what kind of trouble they’d try to cause?”  
         “Oh?  Why would we ev-ever want to try causing _you_ trouble, _Chéri_?”  Thomas giddily chuckled, reaching to put his hands on Guy-Man’s hips.  
         “I just don’t know,” he shook his head, feeling Thomas’s plump lips touch gingerly to the corner of his mouth.  Closing his eyes, he chuckled deeply to himself, turning his head to meet Thomas’s lips fully.  “Mn,”  His body shivered at the still foreign contact.  The pleasant warmth of Thomas’s lips against his spurred his hands to forget the ashtray and drew themselves up to Thomas’s shoulders.  He sighed into the softness of the plump lips, pressing forward into them; when he felt Thomas’s insistent tongue, he was anything other than oppositional.  
         With an open mouth and curious tongue, he invited Thomas inside, a quiet groan from the taller man breaking their silence.  Slowly their tongues played with each other, Guy sucking on the wet, wonderful guest with a languid passion.  Eventually, however, they did have to part, Thomas resting his forehead on Guy’s as they both sucked in their breaths.  Noses bumping together, their lips wanted to mold themselves to one another again, but a convenient gust of wind whipped through the room, rucking up a stack of papers on a drawing desk across the room.  
          “Shit.”  Guy broke away from Thomas’s arms, pulling the window closed before going to his desk and rearranging everything as it belonged.  “This was why you came anyway, wasn’t it?”  He motioned to the desk, reaching to turn the light on that was clipped to the side.  
         “To see you too,” Thomas nervously reminded, coming to stand next to him.  On the desk he observed an array of comic strips meant for newspapers and more stylized version of comics from overseas.  “W-Wow, you like anime?”  He enthusiastically questioned, looking at the angular shapes of the bodies in motion over the various presented panels.  
         The flush already present over Chéri’s cheeks deepened, “Shut up, I just like the art style.” he defended in vain.  
         “N-No!  It’s cool I like it too, I’m really into _Albator_ and _Galaxy Express_!”  Thomas quickly followed up, “I-I kind of also like, em,”  With a nervous chuckle, he added, “ _Android Kikaider_ and _Cyborg 009_.”  
         A melodious laugh broke from Guy-Man as Thomas blushingly explained his tastes, “What _about_ you isn’t behind the times, Thomas?”  He gave the man a shove as he started to segue into a sea of stutters.  “I really liked Leiji Matsumoto’s stuff too when I was younger.  I never saw _Kikaider_ , but the cyborg one I did like.”  
         “Oh!  W-W-Well!  You’ll like _Kikaider_ too!  It’s by the same guy, I-I-Ishinomori!”  
         “Anything from the current decade?”  Guy-Man giggled, picking up a pencil and scribbling something down on a sheet of lined paper as he tucked a lock of hair behind an ear.  The man sifted through a few more papers, lines in dull pastel colors waiting to be inked were mixed in with black speed drawings and linearts with cutting comments in word bubbles.  
          “No, n-not r-really.”  Thomas explained, running his fingers over the lip of the adjustable desk.  In the midst of his silent, cursory perusal, a piece he found particularly interesting was affixed to a lightbox.  The baroque, flowing wings flanking a shield and underscoring an unmarked banner made him smile.  Overall, however, it seemed incomplete, the beginning outline of an eyeball on the center of the shield evident in blue pencil in contrast to the more defined, pink lines.  “What’s this?”  
            “Oh, nothing.”  Guy-Man switched off the box and laid a series of blank papers on top of it.  With an arm motion, he guided Thomas’s attention back to the desk at hand, “Anything you find interesting?”  
             “Oh…”  Thomas looked about the drawings, being careful to lift them by their corners and not touch the fine pencil or pen lines that formed the pictures.  His _chéri_ ’s talent impressed him, it seemed like there was nothing he didn’t already do.  He was a wonderful DJ--from what he had witnessed--and a gorgeous artist.  “These are so lovely.” he pointed out, flipping through a series of flowers.  It wasn’t until he shifted through them at a faster pace that he realized they comprised an animation series.  
             “That’s nothing, it’s not even done.”  Guy-Man grumped at Thomas’s fascination with the sketches, he had a _wealth_ of completed pieces--colored and everything!--and yet he chose to look at those silly things.  “Here, these are…”  His words trailed off when Thomas continued to still flip through the pages of the sunflower blowing in the wind.  “Mng, move.”  
             “Wha?  Did I do something wrong?”  Thomas moved back when Guy’s hands shooed him away.  When the other man shook his head and picked up his pencil, Thomas pursed his lips; his eyes widening as Guy took out a fresh paper and began work on that next panel in the animation series.  
             For the subsequent fifteen minutes, Thomas stood back, watching Guy-Man’s hand glide around page after page.  His mouth hung open in awe at how beautiful the the simple sketches were in such a short period of time.  Clearing his throat, however, Thomas had a question to break their comfortable, concentrated silence.  
             “Do you like sunflowers?”  
             “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Guy started in a stern tone, “but I have a thing for taller beings.”  Thomas saw him smirk.  
             Blushing, Thomas chuckled under his breath, “Bern and Matt are both pretty tall too…”  The skinny man admitted with a bit of thought.  “You don’t find it uncomfortable?”  
             “Why should I find it uncomfortable when I know I could take them any day?”  
            Thomas laughed, nodding in understanding, “I see your point, yep.” Bending over the man’s shoulder at that point, he watched as Guy-Man flipped through the completed animation.  “This is great.”  He smiled as the sunflower swayed to and fro in the wind, a butterfly coming to alight upon the heavy head.  
             “Yeah, whatever.”  Guy-Man brushed him off, “It’s been sitting here for months.”  
             Thomas pressed his lips to Guy’s temple as he downplayed his own work.  The shorter man clicked his tongue and shook his head, “Trying to butter me up?”  
             “It doesn’t matter how long it took you to finish it, but you did.  And it looks wonderful.”  Thomas encouraged, nuzzling his nose up against Guy-Man’s cheek.  
             “Look at you being all supportive and sweet.” The older counterpart snorted with a playful smirk, tipping his head to the side to give Thomas access to his neck.  As wanted, the lips fluttered to the tender flesh, lapping his tongue out to elicit a broader smile.  Chéri let out a soft moan, “What a talented mouth you have.”  
            “It’s bad at making words, but I can make it do other useful things.”  
             “If you don’t mind my asking,”  Guy guided Thomas’s mouth up towards his as he spun around in his chair.  “Is your stutter…  A problem?”  
             “No,” Thomas chuckled then, kissing the end of his nose.  “it became more of a problem after my parents died.”  Unused to casually speaking of the incident, Thomas swallowed a thick lump in his throat.  Guy, as much as he always had, waited for Thomas to find his voice.  Somehow, that curious, patient silence gave Thomas the nerve to speak without the insurmountable sorrow.  “My mouth has always been slower than my brain.” the younger man began again with a touch of a smile.  “I have so much to say and not enough time to say it all.”  
             Guy nodded to him, coasting his hands up Thomas’s stick thighs.  They located and settled in his back pockets, fingers hooking into them in forbearance of Thomas’s continued explanation.  
             “I was…”  Thomas pursed his lips, stepping closer to Guy at the prompting from his hands.  “I didn’t talk at first.  I kept it all inside.  I didn’t know what to say.  What _could_ I say?”  
             Keeping eye-contact with his interlocutor, Guy shook his head.  He tugged the man even closer, bumping their legs together.  
             Thomas split his legs, resting his butt down onto Guy’s knees.  He licked over his lips before continuing, “I felt so many things I didn’t know how to put words to.  A deep…   _Bottomless_ sorrow.  My friend, Julian, though,” Thomas quashed the growing lump once more with a swallow, “he’s so much better with words than me.”  He nodded, “So often, he spoke for me, asked the questions that needed to be asked--the ones I never thought of.  He knew what I wanted to say before I knew.  He knew I needed help.  When I started seeing my therapist, I had so much to say and he couldn’t help me there.  If I wasn’t stuttering, I was crying and the crying never made me feel any better.  It never helped me in sessions either and because of that, my therapist made decisions for me; made inferences I didn’t agree, but didn’t argue with either.”  Thomas cleared his throat, observing his attentive, new friend.  He leaned on his chest, Guy lifting his arms around his waist.  “It _was_ a problem then.  I had to relearn how to speak without Julian there, and, in time, I made progress.”  Again, he nodded to himself as if to confirm that this was true.  “I’d like to think I’m better now.  Or, that I’m getting there.”  He kissed his _chéri_ , “I’m unused to someone just letting me speak; someone letting me work through my thoughts.”  
             “I might know you, but you’re unique, Thomas.  No one else has your point of view.  I want to hear you, not my interpretation of you.”  
             Their lips came together again, Thomas’s arms lifting to Guy’s shoulders.  They both gave light sighs, their mouths opening to each other.  The shorter man’s tongue slipped inside the inviting entrance presented to him.  The two appendages entwined and slid over each other, Thomas moaning, sucking on the guest.  
             “I’m so lucky.”  Thomas sighed when they parted to breathe, each hungry for more still.  
             “I think I am.”  Guy answered back, not explaining further or allowing Thomas the chance to contest before his adventurous hands slipped up his counterpart’s shirt.  
             “Oh,” Thomas moaned, pressing their lips back.  It was Thomas’s turn to flick his tongue into the receptive mouth; Guy’s moaning into the kiss further spurred Thomas onward, lacing his fingers up into the long hair.  
             Like that first night of intimacy, their hands wandered.  They hiked up their shirts and tossed them away; Guy-Man laughed, his eyes crinkling with uncustomary, gentle excitement.  With their mouths meshing and arms clinging to one another, it too them a long while to eventually gather the need to leave the drawing chair.  Their increasingly cramped pants, however, assured them that relocating to more comfortable pastures was going to be a great idea.  
             It wasn’t until Guy-Man had Thomas nude, on his back that the young man remembered he had something he meant to tell him.  Thomas seized, a panic rising in his guts and hammering into his chest.  His body, already sweating, chilled as he stared up at the adoring, blue orbs of his partner.  He stuttered and Guy’s roaming hands stopped, an inch away from the erect organ bobbing against the fuzzy stomach.  
             “Is something wrong?”  
             “G-Guy, I-I-I,”  Why was this so hard?  Well, the _other_ hard thing, probably had something to do with his distraction, but Thomas wondered at the other possible reasons.   _He’s going to be so mad.  He won’t trust me anymore--he won’t do this with me!_  Thomas felt an increasing desire to keep his mouth shut, to play it off; he _wanted_ this so badly!  
             “Slow down, breathe; I’m not going anywhere.”  Guy-Man soothed him with such earnestness in his voice that Thomas couldn’t possibly go through with this without saying something.  It would’ve just been wrong.  It was late July, they had less than a full month left before Thomas had to leave.  
             “B-B-But I-I a-am.”  Thomas divulged, resolving to look away from him as he picked at the nap of the bedsheet crumpled aside.  When his partner was silent, he felt the anxiety rise, his sweat thicken--but he still remembered to breathe.   _You’re okay, you’re okay._  
              “Where are you going?”  Guy-Man logically progressed to ask.  His tone was flat, his blue eyes searing into Thomas’s flesh.  The worst part was, Thomas couldn’t tell if he was angry or if he was imagining it.  That was Guy-Man though, never could tell with his permanently creased brows and intense eyes.  
             “U-University.”  Thomas breathed out, his fingers refusing to stay still on the sheets.  They were beginning to make noise, their tips grinding fabric between them.  
             “I’m not mad.”  Guy informed him, seeing how Thomas was still too terrified to face him.  “I didn’t want to go to University, but you do.  You already told me you were going to study somewhere.”  He raised a hand and stroked his cheek, “It’s okay.”  
             “It-it-it-it’s in-in,” Thomas’s voice dropped to a tiny whimper, his courage leaving him at the most inopportune moment, “America.”  
             The man above him was silent again.  He removed his hand from Thomas’s cheek and sat back.  His partner moved to sit up with this concerning non-reaction and he allowed it, sitting further back.  With his brows pulled down into a true frown he shook his head, “Was this your plan?”  
             “W-Was what my-my p-plan?”  Thomas scooted away from him pulling his legs up to conserve his modesty.  
             “Get a good summer fuck in before--”  
             “No!”  Thomas stopped him, waving his hands out.  
              “--before leaving!” Guy-Man finished spitting at him, stepping off the bed and making for his clothes.  
              “No, Guy, I--”  
             “Don’t call me that!”  The older man thrust his boxer briefs on--they still barely masking his thick erection.  
             “Chéri…”  Thomas began to tear-up, curling his legs closer to himself.  
             “Don’t call me that either.”  Guy-Man hissed under his breath, the next thing on being his jeans.  
             “I w-was so af-afraid.”  Thomas sniffled, hiding his eyes between his knees.  “That-that you wo-would stop talking t-to m-me.” he explained, trying to quash his sobs as Guy-Man buckled his pants.  “Like I wouldn’t b-b-be w-worth it.”  
             Guy slowed his pace of redressing as Thomas cried.  He pressed his lips into a firm line, waiting for him to speak.  There were some choice words he wanted to throw at him, but the more he spoke the more he returned to his realization that Thomas didn’t have a single malicious bone in his body.  
             “I didn’t m-m-mean for things to-to go th-this-this far.  I jus-jus-jus-just…   _Just_ w-wanted to…  I like you a l-lot.”  
             Guy-Man plopped down onto the bed next to him, shaking his head.  He bit his lip as he listened to Thomas sniffle and he raked his hair back with his fingers.  With a lick to his lips, he flicked his eyes to look at the man, his eyes sullenly turned somewhere else other than at him.  Thomas didn’t have a duplicitous thought in his mind and that much was very obvious to him.  
             “I like you a lot too.”  
             “I w-was thinking w-w-we could t-try… A…  A you know…”  
             “I can’t do a long-distance relationship, Thomas.”  Guy solemnly expounded.  He turned from Thomas, looking out to the dark street on the other side of the window.  There was so much he wanted to share with Thomas, but…  He was going to be going away…  
             “N-Not even w-worth a tr-try?”  
             “I don’t want to disappoint you.”  There was a sympathetic frown on his face.  “And I feel that I would.  You’re gonna be busy with school anyway.”  
             “But I…”  Thomas was surprised to find Guy on all fours in front of him, leaning into his face.  
             “So, let’s just have fun while we can, okay?”  Guy kissed his taller counterpart, nuzzling their faces together.  “I really like you and you really like me…  And we don’t have much time left.  We’re both young and here to learn, so let’s see what happens.”  Melding their lips back together, Guy-Man reached for Thomas’s hair, pouring his heart into the contact.  
             “Okay,” Thomas murmured, pressing into the kiss as well and moving to push Guy-Man to his back.  The older man easily acquiesced; Thomas reached for his pants, having to redo his earlier work, but he savored it this time.  Pleasured moans spilling between them, he savored the sound of the buckle coming undone, the hiss of the belt sliding from its loops and the satisfying “clunk” of it to the floor.  
             “Ah,” Guy sighed, Thomas breaking their mouths apart to kiss and nibble down his jaw to his neck.  “ _Ah_!”  The other man called again, slightly louder, Thomas was palming his erection through the cotton of his underwear.  The noises and sight of Guy-Man undulating beneath him rejuvenated the long erection between Thomas’s legs.  He kissed him hard on his lips again, grinding their hips together once the underwear was pulled to rest beneath Guy’s balls.  
             “Guy, oh my…”  Thomas gasped, intensifying the motions of his hips over his partner’s belly.  He felt the other man’s hands clutch at his back, his nails digging in.  It felt so _good_ , he wondered what it would feel like to have Guy scratch him; Thomas never had girlfriends that did that, they all were too concerned with hurting him.  He had never thought about what it would be like to be scratched or bitten.  
             Their bodies slid over each other, Guy’s pants and underwear eventually ending up right back where they started on the floor.  Thomas’s hands kneaded Guy’s chest, down his sides to grip and rub his thighs.  Their engorged members touched and they both gasped in unison.  
            “Fuck,” Guy-Man choked back with appreciation as he lifted his fingers to wrap around the both of them.  He felt Thomas shake and his breaths come out in little stutters.  “oh, fuck, _Thomas_.”  Scraping his other hand up Thomas’s back, he latched into his hair, pulling him down for a firm kiss.  
             Thomas, never having experienced something so delightfully rough, groaned deeply into his partner’s mouth.  His tongue lapped outward, seeking entrance and gaining it easily.  Meanwhile, his hips jerked back and forth rhythmically, in and out of Guy’s palm and against his dick.  He had no idea that such a configuration could feel _this_ good!  It _was_ missing something, however.  
             “Guy, d-do you have lube?”  Thomas moaned, panting heavily as he broke their swollen lips apart.  
             “Thomas, I don’t think that tonight’s--”  
             “N-No, not for that.” Thomas interrupted with a light-hearted tone, nuzzling their faces together, “I meant for your _hand_.”  
             “Oh…  Yes, it’s--ah--it’s over there.  That drawer.”  Guy pointed out the bedside drawer, Thomas having to, unfortunately, remove his hands from Guy’s person long enough to reach inside.  When he removed the bottle of the clear liquid, he was quick to move his hips to squirt the cold fluid between them.  They both had to shiver, they didn’t have time for this cold stuff!  “Are you good now?” Guy seemed grumpy that this very logical item was asked after, really he just wanted this all to move along faster.  He wanted less awkward maintenance and more wondrous, together sensations with Thomas.  
             “Haha, yes,” Thomas grinned down at him, guiding Guy’s hand back around them both.  His cheeks and body were flushed a pleasant, rosy red, Guy’s as well.  And, when Thomas smiled, it was impossible for Guy to not smile back.  
             “Oh,” Guy came again in a tiny voice, rolling his eyes back and resting on the bed.  Thomas moved his hips in the new slick, warm space and he watched Guy twitch, his mouth hanging open.  
             “You’re so beautiful.”  Thomas slipped, immediately pursing his lips afterwards--that was so stupid of him!  “I’m s-s-s-s--”  
             “It’s okay,” Guy-Man giggled, “If you think I’m beautiful-- _oh, oh, **ah**_ \--I can live with it.”  He puckered his lips at Thomas, asking for a kiss and generously receiving it.  
             They both thrusted into the slick hand, their organs pressed delightfully together and only increasing the wonderful sensations.  It hardly took them any time at all to paint Guy’s chest and tangle together in clutching hands, greedy mouths and panting.  Thomas couldn’t get over the sweet, high noises that came from Guy-Man’s mouth.  So uncustomarily vulnerable in their tone and the way he clung to Thomas only increasing it.  
             “Oh my fuck, Thomas.”  He squeaked, burying his face into his partner’s shoulder.  His nails clawed into Thomas’s back as he rode out the rest of his orgasm, so grateful for the young man on top of him.  
             “That was w-wonderful.” Thomas appreciated, cuddling close as they settled into the warmth of the only vaguely sweaty bed.  “Can we do that ag-gain?”  
             “You young people,” the older one rolled his eyes, insincere, “always trying to outdo us old folk.”  
             They both groaned with contentment, another kiss filling the space between them.  It was hard to tell just where one of the men began and the other ended, they held each other as closely as they could.  After a short while, their eyes both grew heavy and sleep became the only thing on their minds.  
             Or, almost, “Can you drive me to work in the morning?” Thomas muttered, breaking the soft haven of togetherness the two had been floating in.  
             “Yeah, but you owe me.” Guy-Man groggily answered, not having the ability, it seemed, to open his eyes.  
             “What do I owe you?” the other asked, letting his eyes flutter back closed with a smile curving back to expose his teeth.  
             “Mn, I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”  
             “In the morning?”  
             “In the morning.”  Guy successfully ensconced himself in Thomas, both falling asleep in one anothers arms as if it were the most natural thing in the world.  
\-------  
             The weeks after that single coupling seemed to fly for both the boys.  Work was a blur monotony, except for the few remaining Sundays they had together.  It became something of a game for the two of them, dancing around each other during their shifts.  Professionalism played a bigger part in Guy-Man’s charade, but Thomas remembered what Stephen had told him his first day of work “ _as long as you do your job…I don’t care what you do out of the view of customers_ ”.  That being said, the two chose to make use of their ample downtime.  Kisses were stolen in doorways coming and going, hands brushed together while gathering product, but their stares at each other across long aisles were nothing short of obscene.  
              _Can you get fired for staring erections at them?_  Thomas thought, his last Sunday he would be working.  His last day working with his adored Chéri.  He found it so hard to believe the way things had gone, going from Guy-Man being the hardest dick on his case--haha or ass--to being the most sensitive person in the whole store.  He knew now, however, that Guy-Man was excellent in the nature of pretense.  He raised it to an artform almost.  
             “What’re you looking at?”  Guy-Man hissed at him from across the loading dock not long after the thought passed through Thomas’s mind.  
             “The sweetest man in the whole store.”  Thomas answered with rosy cheeks and a tiny simper.  
             “Oh, well, uh,” Guy-Man blushed, reaching up to rake his hair back, “is that productive?” He tried _so_ hard to not let Thomas’s affectionate comments affect him, but that was asking a bit much of his enthralled heart and mind.  
             “I think it is.” The taller man’s smile broadened and Guy grumbled under his breath, prompting him to step closer and bend to give his hot cheeks a quick kiss.  “My _chéri_.”  
             “Okay, okay, Douchebag, get back to work.”  Guy-Man waved him off, suppressing his smile and desperately working to get his heart and those damned butterflies to behave.  
  
             The passing weeks lead to other ventures as well.  Events that passed outside of work.  Such as, Thomas finally catching up on all of his university prep.  He poured over papers and finances, budgeting and, learning the layout of UCLA.  It was only then, as Guy-Man sat back smoking by Thomas’s open window that he realized Thomas must’ve had a _hell_ of an inheritance from his father.  
             “Thomas, do you own this house?”  Guy-Man asked, tapping off a trail of ash from his cigarette into the makeshift ashtray.  
             “Yeah, Granny pays the utilities though.”  He explained, running a hand down his strong jawline, eyes fixed on the computer.  With a critical eye, Thomas scrolled through the ledger on his computer, moving to bite a fingernail as he shifted a few variables around.  “She doesn’t want me spending _all_ my money before I even graduate college.”  
             “Whoa…  Really?”  
             “It’s not really possible.  I’ve worked it out a hundred different ways,” he shook his head, “I inherited all my parents’ investments, they’ve accrued so much money over the years--their retirement funds too--that I could continuously pay for the utilities on this house, two more houses, go to a four-year university twice and still have enough left to go to grad school.”  Thomas divulged as if it were a minor detail.  
             “What?!”  Guy-Man’s mouth hung open, utterly stunned.  “I knew the guy was loaded, but--”  
             “Not without a lot of financial knowledge on his part.  It’s more than just his earnings from the music business.  Mom had a job too and they both invested rather wisely.  They both talked to me about it a lot;  I used to think that I’d have no use for the knowledge, but…”  Thomas shook his head, Guy-Man noting the uncustomarily grave expression on his face when he spoke of money.  
             “Have you thought of buying your grandmother a new house?”  Guy wondered, it was none of his business, but it definitely seemed like Thomas to do such a thing.  
             “I asked her, but she wants to stay here.”  His smile came back, dashing the dourness to pieces, “She said this house has character in the dents my fat head has put in it.”  He laughed, “I’m so clumsy sometimes.”  
             “Sometimes?”  The other man smirked, crossing his legs and taking another drag off his cigarette.  “I think your stick body just has trouble holding up that genius brain of yours.”  
             “G-Genius?”  Thomas blinked at him, nonplussed by the idea that he was anything else other than normal.  “N-No!  I’m no genius.  I’m just--”  
             “What kind of eighteen-year-old goes through what you have and still has the time to calculate his finances a hundred different ways for a far-flung future?”  Guy-Man posed to him, raising an eyebrow with a deadpan expression.  
             “I’m just good with math.  And probability…”  
             “You can also work a soundboard you’ve never seen before backwards, play…   _How_ many instruments?”  
             “On-only because Dad and Mom taught me since I w-was a toddler!”  
             “And speak _how_ many languages?”  
             “It’s only three!  Spain is right there and-and-and everyone knows English now anyw--”  
             “I’m terrible with both languages.”  Guy-Man pointed out, finishing his cigarette and stubbing it out.  “Face it Thomas, you’re a genius.”  With a smile blooming over his lips, Guy-Man leaned forward over the back of Thomas’s chair, pressing his lips to his cheekbone.  He wrapped his arms around him and squeezed him tightly, “And I think that’s so sexy.” he purred in his ear.  
             “O-O-Oh…  W-W-Well, I’m s-still n-not a g-genius.”  Thomas stuttered profusely, his beflusterment showing in his red cheeks.  It only increased as he felt Guy-Man’s tongue swirl out over the crest of his pinna.  He shivered and leaned back, “G-Guy…”  
             “Hm?”  Guy-Man swayed his hips to and fro, placing a kiss by the corner of Thomas’s plump lips.  
             “D-D-Do you w-want to…?”  
             “You got the lube and condoms?”  Guy responded, stroking the fluffy, curly hair.  
             “Y-Yeah.”  
             Guy’s answer didn’t require words, his lips pressing against Thomas’s being enough.  
  
             All was not smooth that first time all the same.  There were awkward chuckles, a towel laid down over Thomas’s sheets and squeaks.  Thomas squirmed, his expression turning to shock and terror, “Oh-Oh, my g-g-g-god!  D-Did I jus-just--On-on-on-on y-your h-ha--”  
             “ _No_ , Thomas.”  Guy laughed, “I thought the same thing my first time too, though.”  They both broke into hysterical laughing the next moment, Thomas holding his stomach.  The laughing on Thomas’s part turned to a surprised groan, however, when Guy-Man reinserted his two fingers inside of him.  “ _Ah, my_ \--!”  The younger man’s head flopped backwards to his pillow, a long breath being let out of his lungs before sucking in another one.  “Chéri, th-that f-feels so--”  
             “Good?” Guy-Man smirked.  
             “ _Weird_.”  Thomas raised his hands up to his face, shielding it from the embarrassment.  It didn’t really help at all, but at least he didn’t have to look at his bedmate.  
             “Do you want to stop?”  
             “N-No.”  
             “I know just how to fix that problem, then.”  Guy-Man expounded, stroking Thomas’s flaccid dick with his other hand.  He was happily rewarded when Thomas moaned, his fingers grasping at the sheets of his small bed.  In time, he stroked Thomas to full hardness and it was only then that Guy-Man resumed the motions of his fingers.  
             “ _Ah_!”  Thomas tensed at the unfamiliar, but _delicious_ sensation.  “O-Oh, G-Guy, that-that…   _Oh_ my,” the younger man paused to suck in a breath.  His noises only increased in volume as Guy-Man inserted a third finger and Thomas was raring to pull his sheets entirely off his bed.  “Please, oh, Guy-Man, I w-want…”  
             “Are you sure?”  Guy slowed his hand over his cock, wanting to give Thomas enough breathing space to answer his question.  
             “Yes, please.”  Thomas nodded with such enthusiasm that Guy-Man couldn’t suppress his grin.  
             “Okay, it feels even weirder though.”  
             “I’m-I’m okay with that.” Thomas chuckled sheepishly, moaning and tensing as Guy removed his fingers.  He shivered, “I don’t th-think I’ll ev-ever get used th-that.”  
             “If you do it enough, you will.”  
             Getting used to the sensation of being full was a possibility Thomas could definitely get behind.  From the moment Guy-Man had inserted himself inside, he saw nothing.  His eyes screwed shut, his mouth opened as widely as it could go and he groped for a hand to clutch.  When Guy-Man guided the man’s arms up around his shoulders, Thomas gratefully took to them.  He held Guy-Man as closely as he could, moaning loudly as a pace began to be built.  With his legs held as far apart as he could manage, he tried to pull Guy closer to him, as far inside of him as he could go; the feeling was indescribable, like nothing he had ever experienced and _damn_ he could really see what all the fuss was about.  
             “Chéri--Chéri!--Chéri!--Guy, ah Guy!” He growled in the back of his throat, Guy-Man’s hand milking the last of his orgasm out of him.  And, almost as if Thomas’s grunts and moans were the very cause of it, Guy-Man came not long after, a squeal breaking from his moan-rawed throat.  
  
             That night, Thomas found out that maybe they were a bit louder than was needed.  On the kitchen table, Thomas found a box of condoms and a note from his grandmother that turned him candy-apple red.  Picking up the box and attached note, it read:  
             “Dear Thomas, Eloise and I finished dinner early.  I hope you’re being safe.  I’m over at the neighbor’s right now, I’ll be back at 23:00 ~Granny Adele”  
             With a shriek, Thomas realized that at least his grandmother knew about he and Guy now.  
\-------  
             “So, have you two fucked yet?” Julian asked over a cigarette that Thomas snatched out of his fingers.  “Hey!”  
             “That’s none of your business.”  Guy-Man growled, taking the cigarette from Thomas’s fingers and lighting up.  
             “So, that’s a ‘yes’?”  Julian sniggered, “Amazing I haven’t had to kick your ass yet.”  
             Guy gave a disbelieving snort, rolling his eyes as he took a disinterested drag off the nicked fag, “Keep talking and I can make the reverse happen.”  
             “A gnome like you?”  
             Thomas stared at Julian, his eyes wide.  He cleared his throat and chuckled sheepishly to Guy-Man, “H-He doesn’t kn-know what he says, Guy, it’s…”  The words died on his lips at the murderous look in his boyfriend’s eyes.  A vein bulged in Guy-Man’s forehead and his lips pulled back into a smirk.  
             “C’mere and say that to me without the human shield in the way.”  Guy-Man hissed, pushing Thomas out of his lap to step towards the slightly taller boy in the cramped room.  
             “Uh…  How about you just stay there and I’ll stay here?” It didn’t take Julian long to realize just what was going to happen.  Being that it undoubtedly involved his sunglasses, face, Guy’s fist and those muscular, toned arms, Julian started to sweat.  
             “Too scared.” Guy-Man sniggered.  
             “Nope, just smart enough to not get my face broken.”  
             “Hah, thought so!”  he chuckled to himself, “Mneheheheh.”  
             Thomas sighed, settling back into Guy’s lap as the oldest man continued to smoke.  Their meeting went as well as could be expected.  
\-------  
             And so, it came to pass, the evening of Thomas’s journey to America.  Or the evening prior, anyway.  Guy-Man and Julian both had installed themselves in Thomas’s room.  Thomas had to get up early the next morning to go to the airport with all of his things and they both wanted to see him off.  
             Guy-Man, his hair tied-up and, in nothing but a pair of tight, black shorts, sat in Thomas’s computer chair.  Oil and sweat still gave his hair that sheen that either spelled someone had been vigorously fucking not long ago or had just not showered in two weeks.  Julian was trying not to contemplate how disturbing that kind of was, looking at Thomas who seemed equally tired and sweaty…  Yeah, he knew the reason for those looks.  
             The three of them sat around that night, listening to music and sharing ideas for their future endeavors.  Julian had to go back for his Terminale year and had class starting sooner than Thomas.  Guy-Man had nothing or little to say on the matter, largely, he just sat back and listened, contemplating.  
             “Is everything okay, Guy?”  Thomas questioned with worry evident in his eyes.  
             “Yeah.  Yeah, I’m just thinking.”  
             “Are you okay?”  Thomas went on, Julian having to segue his attention away from the two of them to his phone to give them some semblance of privacy.  The feeling of being a third wheel was strong that evening.  
             “Don’t worry about it, Sugar.” Guy-Man passed him off, leaning on Thomas’s desk to put out his cigarette butt.  “I don’t know about you, but I’m tired.  You want to get to bed?”  
             Thomas and Julian shared a look and both shrugged.  Thomas had to be up in around four hours, so it seemed only logical to them as well.  They three turned off everything in the room, the blue light of the stereo included, and laid down to sleep.  Julian slept in a roll on the floor, Guy-Man cuddled in Thomas’s arms.  As much as he wanted to, however, Guy-Man couldn’t find the blissful release of sleep.  
  
             “Well…  It’s that time already.”  Guy-Man muttered, hair still tied back messily as he watched Thomas shuffle towards his bedroom door with all of his things.  He tried to smile, tried to be happy, Thomas was going on to bigger and better things--he was going to LA after all!--but he couldn’t help the tug at his chest.  Guy-Man didn’t want him to go so far away.  
             “Yeah,” Thomas chuckled uneasily, observing his sleepy boyfriend as he stretched and yawned.  Though Guy-Man was unbelievably adorable in that moment, he had to remind himself that the moment he reached the states, there was no guarantee that they would be an item anymore.  His boarding a plane was essentially them breaking up and he felt more like crying than anything else.  “out to go make my dreams come true.” he croaked.  
             “I wish I could do the same.”  Guy lamented, stepping over to him to put his arms around Thomas’s waist and rest his ear against his chest.  “You’re nervous.” he went on to tease, reaching a hand up to tap Thomas on the end of his bold nose.  
             “I’ve never been to America before and you’re not coming with me.”  Thomas reasoned in a sad tone; he returned the hug to the other man, holding him tightly.  
             “I can’t hold your hand forever, douchebag.”  Guy saw it fit to joke, trying to gain a smile from his decidedly sullen friend.  
             “Will you hold it again, someday?”  
             Guy-Man was silent, Thomas leaning down into his face and holding him nose to nose.  Though it seemed like there was so much pressure on him to respond correctly, it wasn’t because of the pressure in that moment that he did so, “I will.”  He wanted it badly, he wanted to hold Thomas’s hand and walk down the streets of Paris with him again--or any street at night--he wanted to kiss him on the bonnet of a car and cuddle with him in a cramped, soft bed.  
             “You’re so special to me, Guy.”  Thomas kissed him, his soft, plump lips molding perfectly to Guy’s.  
             “I’m nothing special.” the other man responded, stepping away from him, but grabbing his wrist to tug him towards the front door.  He laced their fingers together and squeezed his hand hard.  “But I’m going to miss you.”  
             “Hey, can you two stop being all lovey-birdy and get a move on?  You’re gonna miss your flight, Thomas!”  Julian rushed back to the hallway once leaving the bathroom.  His hair was _perfect_ and it was only four in the morning…  
             Thomas chuckled at him and reached up to rub the back of his neck, “Stop it, Julian”  
             “Yeah, cram a sock in it.”  Guy grumpily responded, clinging to Thomas’s side and grabbing one of Thomas’s bags.  “Why don’t you make yourself _useful_ instead?”  
             “You better watch your tone.”  
             “Oh, what are you going to do pipsqueak?  Put me in time out?” Guy-Man raised an eyebrow at him, throwing Thomas’s carry-on bag over his shoulder by its handles.  
             “What did you just say?!”  
             Sighing sleepily, Thomas pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses, “You guys…”  
  
              With many hard, long hugs--and sniffles from Adele--Thomas disappeared through the customs of the airport and out of sight.  And, as Guy-Man--Chéri--waved goodbye to Thomas--alongside the other two present--that was the first (and last) time Guy-Manuel cried over a boy he never even learned the last name of.  
\-------  
             Thomas sat in the lecture hall.  UCLA had _a lot_ of students in it…  He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting exactly, but it somehow never processed in his mind just how many freshmen there were going to be.  To himself, he wondered which of them were going to be his friends and which he was going to completely despise.  He also contemplated just how many he would never meet the whole time he was going to be at the university.  
             Sitting the whole way through the orientation, by the time he and the other students were free to go, he had a missed call.  His grandmother and Julian had already called him ten or fifteen times, so he wasn’t expecting the missed call--paired with a voicemail--displayed on his phone:  Chéri.  
             An excited jolt lanced through his chest, making him crack the widest smile he had since leaving the grocery store last week.  He dialed his voicemail and waited for the voice he missed so much to pour forth; “Hey Thomas…  Douchebag, haha….”  The man on the other side of the voicemail began.  “I hope you have fun at your university this semester and you follow your dreams and all that…  Cheesy kind of crap I’m not so good with.”  
             Thomas chuckled, imagining the frustration that must’ve been on Guy’s face.  
             “I know I’ve said that no one is special, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t unique.  Even then, you’re special to me too.  You’re amazing, in spite of everything that’s happened to you, you’re so motivated, kind and compassionate…  I had fun and I think I’m ready to go do what I’ve always wanted to as well.  Thank you, Thomas.  Goodbye.”  
             The kind words made Thomas’s heart flutter and his lips stretch into a wide, excited grin.  Since the call was placed less than an hour ago, he brought the phone up to his ear after pressing redial.  He waited with baited breath for Guy-Man to pick up the international call, but what he got instead made his heart sink, blood run cold and stomach drop to the floor.  A series of three familiar tones met his ears along with a recording in French “We’re sorry, the number you have dialed has been disconnected or is out of service--”  Thomas ended the call, a sob breaking from his throat.

  
To be continued in “Here to Visit”


End file.
